Q. What does one do when thrown in a culture so beyond foreign to them?

A. One becomes open and appreciative of all, especially the most simplest of things. In this case, it is the English language.

Last Friday, this fabulous photo was taken of some cool ass, worldly folks, who clicked immediately and became quick BFF’s over the weekend, drawn to each other by the English language. Yeah, we look like a United Colors of Benetton ad, but what did you expect? Ya’ll know how I roll… Meet (from L-R), Germany Max, Boston/New York Moi, Zimbabwe/London/Houston Ralph, and Austria/London Eugen - all here in different lines of work.

Now that we’ve met the players, here’s the play by play. I first met up with Ralph and Eugen for some sushi in their hood in the Lujiazui area of Pudong. This is where the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Jin Mao, Shanghai World Financial Center (looks like a bottle opener) and plenty of other incredible works of architecture stand tall.

Here is a close up snapshot I took of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower:

After which, Eugen announced that his boss had asked him to hand deliver some “important” powerpoint document to him at the Rendezvous Merry Time Hotel in downtown. Let’s stop. The name of the hotel alone got us all kinda in the “uhhhhhh where is your boss??” but we didn’t dwell on it all too long. We picked up Max and hopped in a cab and were headed to to Merry Time for some KTV. (It wasn’t until we wayyyy later learned KTV can sometimes mean karaoke with “entertaining women.”) It was all really bizarre, but we figured this would be mightily interesting to see what Eugene’s boss was up to late on a Friday night at a hotel that had the words “rendezvous” and “merry time” in it.

The moment we arrived, we headed for the elevators where a bunch of older business were exiting. Pretty immediately, we were stopped by the elevator guards and were given the X-crossed arms and were told, “Fullah! Fullah!” (translates to Full! Full!) Eugen phoned his boss and his boss gave him the room number. Upon hearing the room number, the same jackass elevator guards smiled and opened the elevator doors and led us in. We got up to the floor and was greeted to the Diamond Club.The r-o-c-k was really in the building, see below:

Eugen stepped in, not really knowing what to expect. Max, Ralph and I were tip-toe, two-stepping out in the hall, unsure with what to do, meanwhile lady hostesses were waving for us to enter. So we said “F it! When in Shanghai!” Onward we stepped, and we were stared at by the handful of businessmen and probably 3 times as many women. HA! I personally felt the evil eye. HA! (makes me laugh just thinking about it) We weren’t too quite sure what we were gonna do there, but the folks seemed somewhat welcoming and encouraged us to karaoke along with fill our glasses with some really weak liquid. (Overall, by the way, alcohol content in bars/clubs is weak on the initial serving, but you can always return and request for another hit, is what I’ve learned. I was told they measure via shot glass.) Anyway, after about 30min of some awkwardness, and having listened to songs ala Mariah Carey’s “Hero” — slowed version — Funny, I pointed out to the fellas how the songs sounded slower than usual, and Ralph noted that they were probably slowed down in order for them to pronounce and keep up with the lyrics. HAAA!! We eventually made the dip out. It was then that attention was brought to me: the men to women ratio was somewhere around 1:3 or 1:4 in the room. However, when we walked into the spot, our own ratio was 3:1. No wonder, we were being stared at! HAA!

Ok, then next stop was a bar/club spot along The Bund, called Attica. The club part was lame. Stupid neon lights and smoke machines. Crowd was wiggity. We completely skipped it and went upstairs to a decent rooftop deck where you can see a beautiful view of the Pudong skyline. Again, for a spot that was walled top to bottom with Absolut Vodka signage, the drinky drink was rather watered. (Sorry, that’s my events-programmed brain at work.) Chilled there for lil bit then opted to roam around for another spot. By now, we were approaching 1am and found ourselves at the House of Blues & Jazz. Not too bad of a spot. Restaurant/venue with black-white photos of jazzists outlining its decor, etc. We walked in and of course just my luck, the lead singer was roaming around the floor, and snatched me up on stage for a dance. Quite unnecessary especially since we had literally just stepped foot in the spot, but was venue was decent nonetheless. We had arrived so late, the band was closing up their set. We’ll check them out again I’m sure - The Charlton Wilson Band I believe… Here’s a shot of the stage set-up:

We stayed till beyond closing time. Lights were turned on for a while before we finally gave into the staff’s evil stares, and called it a good first night out!

Saturday came at the blink of an eye (literally) and I met up with the E & R, and we headed into Puxi for an authentic Sichuan style meal. Eugen took lead as he had dined there before with his pops. With multiple disclaimers on how we’ll probably not know how to read the menu, but instead will just look at the pretty pics and point - that’s we did. We went ahead and ordered all sorts of dishes, all covered in red hot chili peppers of course because Sichuan cuisine in renowned for being spicy, spicy! Nevertheless, I/We were all game: pork something, of course dumplings, some crazy fish that we couldn’t figure out type, general tso chicken (of all things), some other crazy spicy chopped up chicken dish with red bell peppers, grilled crawfish, crab in a sizzling pot, really good and spicy fried rice…. and we were their last customers for the afternoon… so the workers all passed out at the surrounding tables and chairs!! HA!!

After our delicious almost food-coma meal, we opted to be adventurous and find our way to one of the black markets because Eugen is all about the bargaining game. We befriended a family of 3 who helped us to the nearest metro station and got the fellas a transportation card. (You put money onto these magnetic-credit card size cards and they are good to pay off bus, metro and taxi rides. I already purchased one with Thomas when he first led me into Puxi.) Here we are at the booth and in the underground station of People’s Square. (Btw, the Shanghai trains and stations are super shiny here and very efficient. Too bad the metro stops running at at like 11pm or something like that.)

Some random shots along our way to the black market:

Eugen ended up buying about 25 dvd’s for 120 rmb = $18.. which comes to around 70 cents each! Now of course quality is at risk, and we later learned this when we popped in the discs to play. The first flick, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was a clear bootleg in that we saw hands/fingers covering the camera, heard the audience giggling, then…… in mid sentence, dialogue would stop and/or change from English to Russian to German etc. Probably ended with a 1 good out of 5 deal. Stop-Loss is a pretty decent flick. Oh, but these dealers will exchange or take back the dvds if it’s a bad copy. Just good luck to you for remembering which dealer it was! I personally, have a good one (according to Thomas) on the corner of my street. I’ll check her stash more in depth at some point, but we’re already on a first name basis; her name is Jane. I gotta check that new Pixar film, Wall-E ; I’ve been hearing good things!

Ok back to it! Yeah so anyway, the black markets here are pretty much like Canal Street in NYC, only 3 floors full. However, they are equally annoying. Ralph and I went along with it while Eugen was having a field day.

This one back room even paid homage to The C’s!!

Needless to say, we were exhausted by evening. How to remedy? Well, we popped into the lobby bar of the fellas’ homebase, and met up with Max before his flight back to Germany. Consider it a “see you in 3 weeks” toast.

And now nooooo it doesn’t end there kids! I met up with another new bud, Jonathan (by way of introduction by Nick in NYC! Thanks Nick!) Jonathan aka JJ took us to this super discreet - behind a budget hotel, down a narrow alley, up the stairs to a very delicious Thai spot called, Thai House. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the camera mode.. so no pics this time.. but we JJ invited us to his crib nearby and introduced us to his other Canadian, now Shanghai resident friend Steve, as well as this potent Shanghai concoction called something like “Bai Jo.”

Thennnnnnnn, we met up with a chic named Summer, an extended friend of Ralph’s who had just arrived for studies in the ‘Hai. We met at a very cool spot right in the heart of The People’s Square, adjacent to the Shanghai Art Museuem, called Barbarossa. Upon entrance, I had a good feeling about the spot. You walk into the park and through a sort’ve zig zag boardwalk atop of a mini pond into the bar/restaurant/lounge/roofdeck spot. Decor and ambience was lush and fed off a Mediterranean vibe; hookahs and glasses crowded the tables of patrons.

Music was to my ears’ liking as we passed by the DJ booth and upwards towards the roofdeck. Sounds of bossanova forced me to return to the booth to chat up the DJ. Turns out, he not only is familiar with one of my previous employers, Giant Step, but also had worked with one of my former colleagues. SMALL WORLD! Obviously, we hit it off and I was all smiles to be talking to someone who a) spoke English and b) wasn’t playing Lil Jon. So far, this is the #1 spot on my list.

Next up, we followed the college kids to a hip hop club, called Richy. Getting out of the cab and walking up, I knew this place was a bad idea. Neon lights and stupid people lingering outside got me shaking my head. But hey, I gotta take it all - the good and the bad. Walked in and I was certain this was a bad idea.

Flashing neon, smoke, tacky floor design and just overly jampacked with passed-out folks in the “VIP” booths. E and I opted to grab a seat at the front of the club like old folks and let the kids play on the dance floor, while watching sloppy drunks slip and fall all over the place.

We then made our way towards the exit and this is when it started to get much more entertaining. My words to describe does NOT do any justice to what we actually witnessed. E has PHENOMENAL footage of a chic-fight from start to finish (well till he was chased away from being up close with filming it. HA!), but I gotta wait for him to upload and send it my way, so I can share with you lovely people. Anyway, so OK let me try to explain: At first, we were all mesmerized by the many drunken falls among us:

But that was nothing compared to what happened next. We turned and saw 3 chics stumble down the steps and get into an all out b-slap fest!! The chic on the right basically slapped the living daylights out of the chic on the ground, being helped by bouncer:

After the bouncer got the girl to stand, that’s when slapping and pushing ensued for quite some time. A car drove by and hit the girl. The girl stood up and was dragged across the street to a park bench. And well here’s some footage that I took, which isn’t really the best because it is dark and only captured the tail end of the whole fight. I almost don’t even want to share it because Eugen’s footage is way better. But I can’t help it, so …. You can hear this Parisian dude in the background, who we later chatted up with - but obviously LOVED what he was seeing. You can even see how close Eugen got to the girls on the right side of the screen (white shirt). OK, here it is: “Ultimate Fighting Shanghai”

Here’s us being stupid westerners re-watching the video footage. I gotta also add, throughout all of this - no bouncers nor any bystanders interrupted nor leant a helping hand to the chic who was obviously need of some assistance. And it didn’t end there either. We turned and saw this other chic being carried out by 4 bounchers - one limb per bouncer - carried out of the club, down the steps, crossed the street and dropped her somewhere in the park. Then…. and as folks were exiting, we saw a dude with NO PANTS come out of the club. Didn’t I say this place was gonna be bad as soon as we had arrived??

We FINALLY called it a night.

Sunday came and Eugen and I decided to head into Puxi for some good ol dim sum in the Xintiandi district. This area has been renovated majorly to mirror European pedestrian friendly walkways and piazzas, lined heavily with chic shops and restaurants.

Here we are at Crystal Jade Restaurant:

Then an afternoon cocktail at Stonegrill Dining in Xintiandi….

Then off to the famous Fabric Market - when men and women can get suits, shirts, coats, pretty much anything you want tailor made for cheapo.

The Fabric Market works similar to the Black Market where it’s several floors of the same thing, and you bargain with each tailor for the best price and material etc. Tailors will take measurement, call you back for a fitting, and you’re off. And/or dissatisfied, they will mend till you’re happy. Some tailors will even come to your place for measurements, fitting and delivery!

Now, what is crazy about Shanghai is its rapid growth. You can walk down a district such as Xintiandi and think you are in Europe, then turn the corner and realize you are -insert 3rd world country-. Take a look at these shots and again, the crazy juxtaposition of high rises only a few blocks away… These were real houses and outhouses… as well sales of grasshoppers! We bought a couple watermelons and mangos to go…

And all of this happened in just my first full weekend!!

. . don’t burn the day. .