Person on the Road

Our last day in China was actually very short and consisted mostly of getting on our flight home. However, I will use my "one post per day" policy to share some insights and tips.

The subways are surprisingly organized. I was warned about the congestion, the lack of personal space and the disregard for lines, but it turns out that a few markings on the floor, showing passengers exactly where to stand before boarding the train can make a difference.

The stares that you get as a white person travelling in China can make you feel uncomfortable. It helps to travel with someone who speaks the language and can tell you what they're saying about you behind your back. We were on the subway one day when a group of construction workers boarded. They just stood there and looked at me. And at Julia ("because I'm with a Chinese woman traveling with a white man, they probably think I'm a whore"). I was already prepared, so I yelled "ni kan sheng ma?" (Chinese: what are you looking at?!), but that only made them laugh. They said that my pronounciation wasn't terrible and asked me where I was from, a question which I can actually answer ("Wo shi yiselie ren", Chinese for "I am Israeli").

The food is amazing. You should eat everything, all the time. Next time we're in China, we plan to do a "food on a stick" day. It's gonna be awesome! My only regret is that I wasn't brave enough to try the fried duck head, or the duck neck, that they sell in every corner of every street. Gross.

As a tourist in China, you should have your passport easily accessible at all times. You'll need it for buying train tickets, checking in at hotels, and pretty much everything else.

If you don't speak Chinese or you're not traveling with a Chinese speaker, then, well, good luck. Generally speaking, Chinese people don't speak English. If you decide to go ahead with it anyway, the most useful phrase in Chinese to learn is "bu yao" (pronounce: "boo ya-oo"), which translates to "I don't want it", and is to be used on the swarms of people jumping on you in every touristy site with brochures, food, souvenirs or whatever.

There's always buyer's remorse in China. Avoid buying in the first place you find something. Make yourself visible as you scan stores and stands. The second time you come around, prices will be lower. As a non-Chinese person, the prices stated to you are probably higher. When haggling, remember that just walking away does not work. Stay at the stand and insist on a lower price for a while. Then raise it a little bit. That's when the negotiation starts. (This is what I have learned. It is far from being a perfected method. First, I figured it out pretty late, and second, I'm pretty bad at haggling in the first place).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the ride. I would like to give special thanks to Julia for proofreading, contributing pictures, translating, taking me to China and being my girlfriend. And I hope y'all join me for the next installment of 

Person On The Road

(tun, tun, tuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!)

We had to get up early to meet Phil at the electronics components mall. It was chilly and smoggy and we did not have time for breakfast, so we got a red bean and soy drink, hopped on a cab and went on our way.

Once again, this is a 6-stories-tall building packed with shit. This time, the shit is any kind of electronics component you can imagine: there is one store selling only heat shrink tubes. Another store sells only stepper motors. Most of the stands in the first two floor, however, sell a variety of stuff.

Phil got the stuff he came for, we said our goodbyes, and Julia and I were left alone surrounded by electronics components. What was intended to be a one hour visit became a three hour frenzy, leaving with a loot of tools, motors, ribbon cable, LED strips, and big ass emergancy switches. Great success.

We took a taxi to the fabric district to pick up Julia's new jacket and had a late lunch in an adjacent Muslim restaurant. Next, we found a post office and sent the SIM card we've been using in Julia's phone back to her grandmother in Hainan.

We went back to the hotel to rest, and then took a cab to meet Michael at Cheng Long Hang Crab Palace. This is a fancy place, where they serve you mostly, emm, crab. The flagship dish is the hairy crab. 

The muddy-looking spots on its claws are actually hair. It's a delicious creature, however, hard to manage. For this reason, a young waiter is usually present in the room to come to your rescue whenever you and your crab don't get along. The waiter will then shake his head, roll his eyes, and smile to himself. Promptly after, he will approach you and show you, for instance, how to get the meat out of a leg using another leg, and generally make you feel completely incompetant.

We walked towards People's square, which turned out to be where we walked on our first night in China. We passed by some street karaoke:

And an indoor food market:

And some stands that sold clothes. We were looking for a scarf to get as a present for Julia's mom, so I took my new haggling skills on a final test. Julia started by asking how much a scarf costs.

- "Jiu shi jiu" ("ninty nine") the lady responded. - "pfffff", I said. "wu shi!" ("fifty!") She said something to Julia, who was distracted, and started mumbling. I waved in front of the lady's face to attract her attention back to me, then pointed at Julia and told the lady: "Ta de zhongwen bu hao..." ("her Chinese is not good...") 

She looked at julia and getrured, as if writing on her own hand the figure nine. I cut her off.

- "Wo zhidao jiu shi jiu. Wu shi!" ("I know <what you mean by> ninety nine. Fifty!" - "Jiu shi jiu!" ("ninty nine!") - "Liu shi!" ("Sixty!") and I added my signature pat on the back and "good price for you!" - "Ba shi!" ("Eighty!") - "Qi shi!" ("Seventy!")  - "Qi shi wu!" ("Seventy five!")

and we had ourselves a deal.

We started the day late and headed to the Shanghai Google office, where Julia has set for us some lunch plans. The office is located at the 60th and 61st floors of the "bottle opener building".

We first met Michael, a friend of Julia's product manager at the Mountain View office. Michael is really nice, and he said he'll show us around whenever we want during our stay in Shanghai. After lunch with him we had desserts with the shopping team. We discussed mostly the air pollution that was breaking new records. This was the view from the cafe:

After Chris, one of the shopping team engineers, took us for a tour in the offices, we left to explore the Pudong area, and from there we left to Chenghung Miao, the Temple of the Town Gods area. The area is very touristy, with all your expected stores selling decorated chopsticks and shit. There was a guy selling steampunkish pocket watches. There were 20 Yuan a pop. We got him to sell us 3 for 50. However, when we walked on, there were other people selling the same watches, sometimes for 15 a pop. As Julia said - you always feel buyer's remorse when you're in China. I decided, however, to stop being such a wuss and start bargaining with these people.

Many merchants were selling Chinese good luck knots, so we asked several of them if they know where to get the thread. Only one of them knew - she was actually making these knots in her stand. She told us how to get to the raw materials mall, and also, after some persuading, agreed to sell us all the thread she had left. Finally, mission accomplished. We decided to go to the raw materials mall anyway. 

The mall, like the fabric district, is a 6-stories-tall building packed with small stores selling all the raw materials that are used for making all the shit that you can buy in China.

We found a guy selling the string. I haggled with him a little bit ("Liang ge, wu shi", Chinese for "two for fifty". I added a pat on the back and "good price for you!" in English) and we decided not to buy yet and look for more options. In the basement floor there are mostly toys for wholesale. Piles and piles of them.

We were getting yelled at by store owners - this is not a place for tourists, but for retailers to get their stock. Also, stores were starting to close, so we ran back to the ground floor, got a big ball of red string from one stand, three smaller bundles of other colors from the first stand, and left the building with a smile of victory.

In the street there was a guy frying and selling squids on a stick. We asked for two, and he put three on the griddle. Julia told him we only want two, and the guy said "well, it's 3 for 5, and he (pointing at me) is going to eat two anyway". As soon as Julia translated for me, I nodded - he made an excellent point, and to be fair, the squids were delicious.

We walked towards the Bund, which is the the waterfront area to the west of Huangpu river. On the way we stopped at a knockoff mall. I was getting fond of bargaining - I was learning new techinques, practicing some chinese, and generally having a blast at the same time. We didn't buy anything though.

The view at the Bund at night is supposed to be beautiful, but with the thick smog and the dying-dinosaur-like sounds coming from a crane on the other bank, the atmosphere was very apocalyptic.

From there we started walking towards the Old Millfun, which we were told is worth a visit. We walked by a small market and bought a weird green vegetable for my vegetable gallery. I also chatted a bit (mostly through Julia) with a lady selling live chicken and pigeons. Well, she kills them before selling them.

The Old Millfun is known for its interesting architecture. Today, it's a strange mall, with closed shops, high-end restaurants and a performance center. We walked around for a bit and left.

For dinner, we stopped at a small restauraunt that had all the main courses still alive in a set of plastic containers laid out in the middle of the street. We were feeling brave and adventurous, so we pointed at some random things. The waiter told us how he recommends them being cooked, and took us to a table.

One dish was squids - that's an easy one. The next was Haichang, also known as Penis Fish. Why, you ask? Well, because when still alive and well in the ocean, or in a plastic container in the middle of the street, they look like this:

After being cooked in chives, and feeling less happy, they look like this:

and they actually taste pretty good.

The third dish turned out to be silkworm chrysalis. 

They pop in your mouth, releasing creamy, weird tasting substance. The shell is to be spit out. This one is not for the faint-hearted. Or for Julia.

We took a taxi to the hotel to get a little bit of rest, and then went to meet Michael, his friend Mike, and Phil, at a whiskey bar called Constellation 3. We had some whiskey to start the evening, departed from Mike, and were taken by Phil and Mike to KTV.

KTV is a chain of karaoke places, in which your party rents its own room. You can select from several packages that differ in the number of hours and the number of beer bottles. The rooms are equipped with a karoke system that allows you to control key, tempo, balance between the playback and your microphone, and even the room lighting (lasers included!). There were also dice, and Michael taught us how to play a local gambling game.

Michael had to go, so Phil took us to "88". It's a steampunky club where even in what Phil described as a slow night, people seemed to be partying pretty hard. It feels to me like Shangahi is living as if the world will end tomorrow. The smog might have biased my perception, though.

We left the club at around 3AM, got a variety of things on a stick from a dude in the street corner, and took a taxi home.

One of my favorite ways to explore new cities is to define tasks that need to be accomplished. The more random these tasks are, so i discovered, the bigger the chance of having a cool adventure.

Our first task for the day was to try to find some red string. You know these Chinese good-luck knots kinda thing? So we want to make one in the shape of a Chamsa, which is (kind of) a Jewish good-luck kinda thing. I know, we're disgusting. Anyway, we need red string. We went to the fabric district, which is mostly this three-stories tall building packed with tiny fabric and clothes stores.

Everybody was yelling at me, of course. "Halo! Come in! Look-Look (which is a weird translation for the common Chinese expression "kan-kan")". Most would say "scarf!", which for some reason they seem to think I need one. Some of them would hold in their hand some gloves as they yelled "scarf", and, when I declined, took a scarf and yelled "gloves!"

We didn't find any string. However we did find me a really smooth black, Chinese-style jacket, and a nice light jacket for Julia, which they had to make for her. We declared our task to find string as a temporary failure, and we moved on for our next task - finding the Chabad House of Pudong.

Chabad, in case you don't know, is a movement in Judaism. They are known for having centers all over the world that help travellers and Jewish locals with their religious needs. I have never actually been to one, but I was told by friends who travelled that attending a holiday meal is a memorable experience. It was the last night of Chanuka, so we decided to go. We didn't know what to expect, so we defined the task as lighting Chanuka candles.

It took us a long time to find the place - a taxi dropped us off pretty far from the address we had, so we walked for a while, and when we finally got to the approximate location we realized that I had the wrong address the whole time. We corrected the address on my phone's google maps and followed the directions, and when we got there we realized that this time the phone was wrong. We walked even more, and just as I was about to give up - we found it.

It was a house in the middle of a "nice" neighborhood - the entire neighborhood was surrounded with a fence and had a guard at the gate. The door was open, and the Chinese housekeeper let us in. Nobody else was in sight, although we could clearly hear children. After a few minutes of waiting, Julia asked the housekeeper if she could call somebody.

Rabbi Greenberg and his wife were super nice to us. It turns out it wasn't that kind of a Chabad house. Theirs is more focused on the local Jewish community. Rabbi Greenberg's brother is running another Chabad house closer to the center of the city, which is more dedicated to helping travellers. Regardless, they sat to talk to us, gave us sufganiot (doughnuts, a traditional food for Chanuka. It's not all about latkes, you know) and gave me candles to light. Mission accomplished.

We left after a short time because we didn't want to be in their way as they prepared for dinner, and went on our way to meet Phil.

Phil is colleague of ours from our days in the Media Lab, and is now working in Shanghai as a design technologist for Frog Design. Accompanied by Eva, his German co-worker, he met us near his work and took us to "Mr. X".

Mr. X is a complex of rooms which you can book. Your party is locked in the room, and in order to get out you must solve a series of puzzles. This was so much fun! The room Phil booked for us was called "The Book of Isaiah", and had interleaved Jewish and satanic motifs, so I would describe the experience as being ignorantly, harmlessly, and amusingly anti-Semitic. Otherwise, it was fucking awesome. The puzzles were hard and challenging, the execution was very good, and the atomsphere was actually a little scary, which was perfect. Solving the last puzzle (we actually used a hint for that) helped us open a chain that locked a door in a tube in the middle of the room. Inside it was a ladder, and when we climbed it we found ourselves on the builidng's rooftop - we won!

Good taste is not Mr.X's strongest point.This, for example, is in the waiting room/bar:

and more research revealed that there used to be another room called "concentration camp". If you don't care too much about these things, I strongly advise you go. They are a chain and can be found in several other cities in China.

To celerate our victory, Phil took us to a speakeasy. The elevator drops you in a room that has nothing but stacked bookshelves and a telephone. Eva picked up the phone, talked to someone, and one of the shelves turned out to be a secret door. We went in, had a drink, departed from Eva who had to wake up early, and continued following Phil around.

First, he took us to the Bomb Shelter. A club that is designed as, well, a shelter from bombs. The space is very cool, but was also very empty. We continued to the Apartment, another bar where local girls come to hunt for ex-pat men. We had one drink and left.

We decided to leave for Shanghai that night, rather than the next morning, so we checked out of our hotel, left our bags in the luggage room and went out for a last day of adventures in Nanjing. We went to explore Zhongshan - a huge park at the eastern end of the city. We took a metro and got to Nanjing's outskirts where we got some breakfast and went to a quick walk inside a local market.

Between the long stands selling vegetables there were a couple that had live chickens in cages. The one next to it was the butcher's stand. How convenient. 

The most common form of transportation vehicle in China is electric bikes. The are quiet and fast, which is nice if you're riding one, but terrible if you're a pedestrian about to be hit by one. Common practices with an electric bike is yanking out the original pedals (if one looks closely, one can still see the axis rotating as the bike is running), and completely disregarding traffic laws and common sense. I'm telling you all this now because right before entering the park we came across this wonderful specimen:

Zhongshan consists of a chain of hills, and the easiest way to get up is to take a bus from the parking lot at the entrance. After being dropped off we had to walk a little to get to the stairway that leads to Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum. 

At the top there's a room with the big statue of the dude, but unfortunately the tomb itself is kept closed. Bummer. From there we walked to the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, where the Hungwu Emperor, founder of the Ming dynasty, is buried. All Ming dynasty emperors built one of these for himself, and they are scattered all over China. However, some of them do come in clusters. Again, our attempts to see the actual grave were thwarted, as we were told by the guy at the gift shop that the the actual grave is closed for the season. We walked towards it anyway, and found ourselves wandering through a walled forest known as Lone Dragon Hill.

We walked along the entire wall and found ourselves back at the starting point. We still don't know where the grave is. What does a guy need to do to see a Chinese ruler's grave these days?!

We had to leave - we still had a train to Shanghai to catch. That did not stop us getting distracted by the ruins of another Mausoleum:

What we thought was the purple river but was probably just a small pond (these are sausages at the top left corner):

and a calligraphy garden:

Our first destination was the Confucian temple. It turns out this was right next to where we had the little crabs the day before. We had brunch in one of the food standד and walked in. The temple is very, how shall I say it - Confucian. I'm kidding, it's very nice, but there's not much I can say. Here's a couple of pictures. That must be worth around two thousand words these days.

After the temple we continued to wander around. The area around the temple is very touristy, with tons of shops selling pretty much the same Chinese souvenir things, like jade jewelry, chopsticks and good-luck Chinese knots (about which we shall talk more in a few days). Julia found hats that used to be worn by Chinese officials. She and her sister have been wanting these since childhood, so we bought two. Black ones, not hideous red like this one:

We then found something I have never seen before - a leatherman-like multi-tool that has a hammer. I just had to get it. Now I am the proud owner of this strange contraption:

We then went to the presidential palace, which has a rich history that includes being the place where Sun Yat-sen, first president of the Republic of China, was sworn.

We started the day by moving to another hotel - the Motel168 where we just spent the night just had bad qi. After settling in a room at a Jinjiang hotel, we went to see the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. It commemorates the killing of 300,000 of the city's people by the Japanese forces in 1937. The most horrifying room is an actual excavation that exposed skeletons of people tortured and murdered by the Japanese soldiers.

Interestingly enough, there's a wing that is dedicated to Auschwitz. I suppose it's good for us all to remember that terrible things happened, and are still happening, not just to us.

However, the circumstances didn't seem to affect the behavior of any of the visitors. One guy crossed a memorial room that had a big sign that said "solemn silence" as he was yelling loudly into his phone, people were eating baked yams that they bought outside the memorial hall, right above the excavated skeletons, and people were blatantly taking pictures, with flash, despite the signs clearly asking to refrain. The ushers don't seem to care much either. God, I hate people.The peak was when we sat down to rest for a bit. After a few minutes, I realized that a dude sitting next to me was taking pictures of us - he was holding his phone, and on the screen were Julia and me as seen through the front camera with the face recognition square things framing our faces. I wonder what he was thinking - "OMG! a white guy! in the massacre memorial! Nobody is ever going to believe me!" Anyway ,to retaliate, I pulled out my phone, stuck it in front of his face and took some pictures of him. It was dark, and he was very ordinary looking, so I'll spare you guys.

From there we continued to the brocade museum which we passed by on the way, not knowing what "brocade" even is. Now I can tell you that it refers to loom-woven decorative fabrics, and for me, that meant more looms. I love looms. I would like to have more looms in my life. And less people. Love looms, hate people. That's just the way I am.

From there we took the metro to the Nanjing University, where Julia's dad got his degree in physics. We took a picture of Julia at the university gate to show her dad, walked around just a little bit, because it was already dark, and went to a bar that we saw on the way. It was still a little early, so we were the only patrons, and the stage that was fully equipped for a band was empty. The staff told us that there's a show every night at 9:30pm, so we decided to leave after a few drinks and come back tomorrow for the show.

Next we had to find dinner. We went to a more central part of town, where we saw a food stand that sold deep fried crabs. They have been deep fried for so long that you just eat them with their shell.

To make things easy for us, Julia picks the food, unless I have a craving for something. This time she messed up and accidentally ordered three dishes of soup. I made two resolutions at that meal: first, we can cut down on our soup consumption from now until the end of the trip. Second, I really need to speed up my learning of Chinese.

We woke up in four o'clock in the morning, for the third time in a row, We were supposed to meet Ms.Talkative outside our hotel and hike for an hour or so to meet the rest of the group at sunrise. It was dark and cold, and Ms. Talkative would not show up. We called Fang, who told us something along the lines of "oh, yeah, she will not be joining you, just start walking", Thank you, Fang.

We climbed the mountain in the dark, which was cool and unpleasant at the same time. After an hour or so, we got to the hotel where the rest of the group was staying, and peeked into one of the rooms. These were small, smelly rooms in which about ten men, or women, depending on the room, were stacked into bunk beds. We thanked god that we paid more in order to get our own room in a much nicer hotel, and walked outside to see the sunset, which was very pretty. 

Fang gathered us and led us down the mountain. Here's a group picture:

Left to right: Ms. Talkative, Julia, Red Coat, Me, Old Lady, Mr. Trooper, Mrs. Trooper, Annoying Mom and Annoying Girl.

Fang showed us a famous pine tree (yes, it's a just pine tree), quoted some poems, and pointed out more rocks that look like things. Like this rock, that looks like an old Nokia cell phone:

This rock is actually called, and I kid you not, "The Cell Phone Rock".

Between Fang's elaborate descriptions of rock formations, Julia and I were engaged in our favorite pastime, which is hating other people - this could be for any reason whatsoever, like yelling, shoving, posing ridiculously for pictures, or just being people that are not us.

We took a break to rest, and Julia told me that she registered us to take the cable car down the mountain instead of walking down because we was tired, and it's only 80 Yuan for each of us (about $26 total). Guess what? It turns out everybody in the group was tired after climbing the mountain for two days, and nobody wants to walk the remaining 9 kilometers. This resulted in the amazing coincidence where the entire group, including Fang, took the cable car and met at the foot at the mountain around noon, just as scheduled. I wondered what would have happened if I told Fang "no, I want to walk. And being my tour guide, you're gonna walk with me. Nine kilometers. While everybody else waits for us down there." 

After the cable car ride, we walked for just a little bit longer until we got to the buses. An amazing performance by the Zhaixi-tourist-trafficking-network brought us to a restaurant where the bag we left at the hotel was miraculously waiting for us. Not only that - since we were hungry and already in restaurant, we ordered some food, and guess who shows up and had lunch at the table right next to ours? Fang! What are the odds?!

Another bus came and picked us up to take us back to Nanjing, It was mostly empty, and we both fell asleep immediately. We woke up a couple of hours later, to the sound of a beast of a guy chewing sugar cane across the aisle. The bus somehow was now packed with people. They were probably picked up when we were asleep. The beast across the aisle was way too tall and had a big face and big hands, and he was biting off pieces of sugar cane, chewing them loudly, and when he was done with a piece, he just opened his mouth and let the piece fall to a trash can he had between his feet. I wouldn't mind that so much if he didn't have dozens of these sugar canes and the repetitive process was not so loud and disgusting.

Naturally, we could not go back to sleep, so we stared out the window, through which we could see entire cities being built at once. China is going down, I tell you. And everybody else is next.

We woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning, again, and met Fang, our tour guide. He advised us to leave our travel bag at the hotel and take only backpacks. The hotel will charge only 10 Yuan, about a dollar and half, which is not a lot of money, but isn't this what micro-payments are about?

We were trafficked, again, by a minivan, to a bus that took us to the entrance to the mountain park area, and then another bus took us about half way up the mountain.

Up on the mountain we finally understood who is in our group. We were nine, or if you like - me and eight Chinese people. Fang told us we could either climb the first 6.5 kilometers by foot or take a cable car up the mountain. Five of us chose to climb - Julia and myself; an annoying girl in her early twenties and her mom; and a middle aged woman, who climbed like a real trooper, while her old husband took the cable car.

The way up was hard, but really nice. Many people on the trail saw me as a much more interesting attraction than the mountain. "Halo!", they usually called, usually pairing it with an awkward hand up, kind of like an native american greeting style gesture. "Hello! Ni hao!" I replied to one of them. This was where we both exhausted our knowledge of the other person's language. His friends, however, were very impressed. "He replied to you! wow, you really speak English? where did you learn it?" said one of them, according to Julia's translation.

Anther group of youngsters was more intrigued by Julia and mine's relationship: "oh... she must be his tour guide!" said one of them, forgetting that regardless of whether she was right or not, Julia can understand her very well.

All along the track, there are a lot of people carrying supplies up and down the stairs. These supplies are being delivered to the various kiosks that are scattered along the path or the hotels that are at the top of the mountain. Some of these men carry at least 40 kilograms, as we estimated by counting the amount of water bottles they can were carrying. It's interesting that there's enough manpower for this transportation system, but not to build an automatic system.

Notice the cell-phone stowed in his carrying device.

Our strategy for not being late to the meeting point was to make sure we're always ahead of Annoying Girl and Annoying Mom, AKA The Annoyings, and the middle aged woman, who was actually climbing the mountain like a trooper.

We got to the meeting point. Fang was there with those who took the cable car - Mrs. Trooper's husband, an old lady, a quiet lady with a red coat and a talkative lady with an orange coat. Feng gathered us said a more polite version of "Welcome to Yellow Mountain! It's not called that because it's yellow, but because we tricked you into buying these stupid yellow raincoats before you came up here!". By the way, every kiosk on the way up sells these coats, contrary to what we were told by the girl who sold them to us yesterday. Damn you, girl!

Fang took us for a hike around the flatter top of the mountain, which is really pretty. Fang is very good at, again, trafficking people, and also showing us rocks that look like other things. On the top left corner of this picture, for example, is a monkey watching the valley:

There were also rocks shaped like a fish, a rabbit riding a turtle (or was it the other way around?) and an iguana humping a squirrel. I might have misheard Fang's interpretation on the last one, I admit - my Chinese does need more work. Also, the rock sure looked like an iguana and squirrel shagging to me.

The Annoyings were being very annoying, unnecessarily yelling to each other and stopping every single second to take a picture. Here is Annoying Girl:

After a while Fang took us to our hotel, where we got a chance to drop off our stuff while the group, who were all staying in another hotel, waited for us. We all walked around some more, and then Fang sent Ms. Talkative (who was also isolated in a separate hotel), Julia and me to watch the sunset from a nearby peak while he took the rest of the group on another hour and a half hike to their hotel. We had time to stop in a lobby of one of the hotels to get some coffee, which was one of the best coffees I ever had. Not because of the actual quality of the coffee, but because I was cold and tired and hadn't had a cappuccino in ages.

The only good thing about the air pollution in China is that it makes really nice sunsets.

We got up at around four o'clock in the morning in order to catch our tour bus, which we found, of course, a block away and on the other side of the street of where we were told it would be. The bus broke after half an hour, and we were picked up by a smaller bus. After five more hours we got to Zhaixi, a town that resides at the foot of Huangshan. The people of Zhaixi are extraordinary in the art of trafficking tourists and collecting micro-payments from them: we were taken off the bus in front of a restaurant/convenient store, where we were told by an impressive young lady to buy yellow raincoats, because, well, it rains up there in the mountain. Everybody bought raincoats and many also bought a 3-Yuan (about half a buck) walking cane. We just got the raincoats. When I buy a cane, it's going to be a fancy, hand-carved one.

The bus left and a swarm of minivans showed up, picking up four people each, to take us to our hotels. After being dropped off, we were told by our driver that we have the afternoon off, so we could either chill, or he can take us to some nearby attractions. We decided to go.

It's important to note that the micro-payments collected are usually fair - the driver took money for tickets and an additional 30 Yuan, about $5, to himself.

After lunch the driver picked us and two other ladies up and dropped us off at Emerald Valley. He gave us our tickets, told us to meet him back at the same spot in an hour and a half, and left to traffic more tourists.

Emerald Valley is pretty much a long walk along a river. It's very pretty, and supposedly very romantic, with a big rock at the middle of the valley on which the word "Ai" (Chinese for "love") is carved and painted red.

I started to develop special interest in documenting the ancient Chinese art of picture posing.

After an hour an and a half, the driver took us to Nine Dragons Falls, and gave us another hour and a half to walk around. Nine Dragons Falls is a much prettier, intricate network of rivers, valleys and waterfalls, and had we known better, we'd prefer spending three hours there. Also, it turns out that some scenes from "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger" were shot here.

We were getting a little tired of chasing hotels and figuring out what to do, so we decided to book a three day organized tour to Huangshan - the yellow mountain. For that, we had to go first to Nanjing.

So not a lot happened that day. We took a train to Nanjing, then a taxi to the hotel, then looked for the tourist agency for a while because it was totally impossible to find. Once the tour was booked, we went to a hot-pot place, bought some snacks for the ride, gloves for me (the pattern spells out "SHOWFLS", which was probably supposed to be "SNOWFLAKES") and earmuffs for Julia, and went back to the hotel.

This is a good time to talk about the Chinese perception of personal space.

And we're done talking about it. There is no perception of personal space in China. People will walk straight into you, stand right in front of you, and push you for no reason at all. Unfortunately for them, I am both Israeli and vengeful, and so I quickly developed a variety of techniques to deal with them, most of them involve the use of a bag. If I have my backpack, for instance, I turn quickly and have the bag shove my offenders off of their course. When I'm carrying our travelling bag in my hand, I just aim it to the knees or pelvis of whoever is blocking my way as I try to get of the subway.

We started the day by getting a taxi to the silk museum. Suzhou, turns out, used to be the silk capitol of China. Before going into the museum we stopped at a tiny restaurant (more like two tables in the middle of the street) and got breakfast: Youtiao (literally meaning "oil stick", basically it's deep fried dough), tea egg, and soy milk. It was excellent.

The silk museum was a lot of fun. Especially the section dedicated to the production process of silk.

We stared at this for a while until we realized that the worms were real.

This section ends in a room that occupies some old fashion looms and about four women were actively weaving silk on them. These fascinating, complex machines are slowly turning into my new obsession.

Outside the silk museum we noticed a very tall pagoda. We decided to check it out. 

The pagoda is located at the heart of the Beita Bao'en temple. We walked around and then climbed the damn thing just to find some air polluted, disappointing view of the city.

From there we took a taxi to the Humble Administrator's Garden. The area is very touristy, and a lot of little old Chinese ladies try to shove tour flyers into peoples' hands. I practiced some Chinese and yelled "bu yao! bu yao! bu yao!" (don't want!) randomly. Before visiting the garden, we sat down in a small restaurant. A heavy white guy with a white goatee and blue eyes, dressed like a Chinese vagabond, came in, sat down at one of the tables, and shortly after burst into a loud conversation with the restaurant owner, in fluent Chinese (brought here as roughly translated by Julia):

- "Do you have baozi?" - "Yes, of course." - "I would like some, then. Do you have beer?" - "Yes, whatever you see on the shelf." - "But they are warm, I want a cold one." - "It's too cold for cold beer, don't you think?" - "You are very lazy, you know? Instead of standing here and talking to me about beer, go make my baozi!"

After our meal we went to the Humble Administrator's Garden. It's pretty fancy for such a humble administrator.

Being pretty much the only white guy around, I get a lot of stares. A tiny girl was fascinated by me, and I could see how her dad practiced with her until she was ready to approach me and say "Hello! what is your name?". I said "Hello! Ni hao!" back which made her the happiest thing on earth, as she started jumping all over the place.

After the garden we went to the Suzhou Museum which is right next to the garden. The museum is a must see in Suzhou - first of all, the architecture is very impressive. The art is really interesting too, especially the calligraphy section.

 After an afternoon snack we took a taxi to go to the hotel, but when we passed the old city we asked the driver to drop us off. It's a really pretty, very touristy area. 

We entered some stores. Chinese sales people will follow you around all over the store, even if you try to make it very clear that you don't need their help. In a silk store, we were followed by a girl who looked a little like that girl from "The Grudge". Having her follow me around is not what I would call a positive shopping experience.

We woke up at the Fish Inn hotel and went out to look for some breakfast. The area we were staying is home to Ningbo street, that offers a large variety of street food. The way food is treated in the street is very different than anything I've seen before.

The head of the fish, at the far right, was still trying to breath when the picture was taken. There's also this:

And to clarify, you are looking at washed clothes and pieces of meat hanging from a rope to dry.

From a small food stand we got a Congyoubing, which is an excellent fried onion patty kind of thing, and then we sat down in a small restaurant for some dumplings.   

On the way back to the hotel we passed through an area of hardware stores which felt to me like heaven. They had everything - electronics components, gears, bearings, pipes, and all in a huge variety.

Ahhh.. big bulky buttons.....

We went back to the hotel, packed our bags and headed for Suzhou, about a 30-minute train ride.

In Suzhou we checked in at a Motel168, which is a local chain of hotels, and went out to look around. The hotel sits on a river bank, and across the river there's a small row of food stands. They offer mostly pieces of meat on sticks. There's really no need to ask what kind of pieces of meat these are, but they're pretty good. We continued to the nearby Xiyuan Temple. Here, have some pictures:

We then took a taxi to Suzhou Gongyuan (Suzhou park), but because of Julia's foreign accent (we're working on that) the driver took us to Suzhou Gongyiyuan, which is something very different. When we realized we were heading the wrong way Julia notified the driver, who then suggested to just drop us off at Jinji Lake that was close to where we were. We were welcomed by a sculpture of a dog sniffing a pooping baby's ass.

The lake is nice, and this was when we were really struck by how polluted the air is. 

We decided not to give up visiting the actual park we wanted to see, so even though it was already dark we took a metro and walked around Suzhou Park. At night, the park serves as an ad-hoc exercise ground for the elderly. It seems like old Asian people just make up random exercise routines on the spot. Some of them were just walking around while other were leisurely swinging limbs back and forth. One gentleman was standing in front of a tree while pounding it with both hands.

Two weeks in China. Since Julia has been to Israel twice already, it has been decided (if you get my drift) that it's time we went to her motherland. Fine, her parents' motherland. Her grandmotherland, I suppose.

So we took a China Eastern flight to Shanghai. The personal entertainment unit offers foreign language learning games, which I used to brush up on my Chinese. Unfortunately the game broke after an hour or so, and restarting it did not change anything. I decided to diagnose the bug as a memory leak and tried to get some sleep.

About half an hour before landing, China Eastern offers the passengers some Taichi practice, or as they like to call it, "Taichi in the microspace".

A lot of passengers cooperated, and so did I, as I already drew too much attention as one of the very few non Chinese passengers on the flight.

After landing, we took a train to the city and walked to the Fish Inn Bund which turned out to be a nice little hotel. We checked in and went on to the city to find some beer.

As we were walking around Nanjing Road, we heard a girl calling "massage! massage!" and immediately after a male voice replying "Lo, lo massage!" (Hebrew: "no, not a massage!")

- "Lama lo? (why not?)" I yelled to the guy.

- "Gam po?! (here too?!)" the guy responded.

I like how easy it is for me to have a meaningful conversation in so few words when it's in my native language. Also interesting is the fact that my first interaction on the streets of Shanghai is with an Israeli.

We walked for quite a lot, and after a while finally saw a sign: "Beer and Coffee". We did it! But when we went through the door, I realized we might have a problem: There was a bar, but there was only one table. Around it sat mostly girls. "We're in the wrong place" I told Julia, but it was obvious she doesn't understand what's going on.

All the girls got up at once, and one of them approached me. Not "us" - "me", 

- "Come in, we have pretty girls" she said as she touched my wrist. Then she pointed at Julia - "and it's free to watch". I said "no thank you", and dragged Julia outside. Only then could I quietly explain to her that we stumbled into a whore house. To be fair, it was her first time. I had inadvertently stumbled into whore houses before.

By now we were hungry, so we found a small place to have some dumplings. The menu did not disappoint us and provided long moments of Chingrish fun:

Before leaving Mojave, I wanted to wash the truck a little. The main reason for this was to make sure that when I return the truck, nobody looks at it too much. If they do, they might find out that the roof is a little dented. I'm pretty sure that it's not my fault, but then again, I did smash the roof of that motel back in... where the hell was it? West Virginia, wasn't it?

There was a French couple already using the car wash station, and the wife did not appreciate my attempts to be friendly. Possibly because her English was not very good and she couldn't understand why the hell I was standing there; possibly because she's an asshole; possibly because she just didn't like me; but most probably because her husband seemed to be making friends with strange men too easily for her taste, if you get my drift.

They left, I gave the truck a rinse, and apart from breakfast at the small town of Tehachapi, I didn't stop until California.

As I entered California it seemed like I entered the place where America go to summer camp. Right at the border a bearded hippy inspected the truck: "do you have any plants?" No, just my stuff. "So no plants?" he seemed almost disappointed.

He asked me where I came from, and we briefly discussed the bombings in Boston. Then he greeted me with a "welcome to California, man" and I drove in. A minute later I passed a summer resort, with bungalows, boats, zip-lines and such.  I think the biggest lesson from this trip is that no matter how stereotypically America is presented to the world, the truth is much more extreme.

A few more hours of driving and I got to Mountain View where I met Julia. She works in the Google HQ, so she gave me a tour around campus. We went home, unloaded and returned the truck.

And so, my 4700 miles, coast to coast journey has ended. Thank you guys (all two of you) for following me. I hope you had a good time and that you keep an eye on this blog. You never know when I will once again be a

I took some time in the morning to wander around Seligman. Although this town has the name of a Jewish lawyer, its character is very different.

Three or four buses were parked along the main street, and the French tourists that they brought were swarming the souvenir shops. I managed to find a shop that was relatively quiet and that also served breakfast, and after eating I went back on the road.

I drove taking very few stops, going back and forth between the I-40 and route 66, until I reached Mojave. The first thing that you notice once you enter Mojave is the insane amount of wind turbines. The second thing that you notice is that the town looks like it gave up, with many of the stores on the main street deserted.

I drove the truck into the parking of the "Best Motel" and asked the shy Chinese guy at the reception desk where I can find the best motel in town. When he was done being confused he gave me a room. I walked around the depressing town for a while.

Then I went to get dinner. There are very few place to get dinner in Mojave. I stepped into El Jefe Baja Grill. Once again, I was the only costumer in the place. The waiter was a tough, Hispanic young man. So tough, he had tattoos on his eyelids. Yes, I'm being totally serious. Tattoos. On his fucking eyelids!

Being the tough kid that he was, and being a waiter in a shitty restaurant in a shitty town, did not prevent this young man to act as if he is working in the fanciest restaurant in Paris, standing tall and contiguously calling me "Sir". I had dinner and quite a few beers there as I was watching "Chopped" on the big TV. 

Before leaving Grants, I walked around to take some pictures.

It was only then that I slowly started to put together the pieces of the story of Route 66. In short, it is one of the first roads in the US highway system that connected Chicago in the east to LA in the west. It was a very significant road until the I-40 opened, which resulted in the near obsolescence of Route 66. These days the route is experiencing some renewed recognition, and being declared as a "scenic drive" by some states in which it passes.

Grants's main street is a small portion of Route 66, which explains the large number of motels, along with the terrible condition that they're in, like this abandoned one:

When I was done in Grants I started driving out of New Mexico and into Arizona. There were a lot of signs at the sides of the roads advertising Indian souvenir shops, and all theses signs looked the same. I stopped for lunch at a gas station owned by the Hopi. When I got back to my truck I noticed that I parked it with all the big boys, and that it looks kinda ridiculous:

Driving some more, I saw a sign directing to the "Meteor Crater". I had to check it out. Turns out it's a crater created by a meteor some 50,000 years ago. It's very hard to get it all in a picture, so here's the best I could do:

I drove on the I-40 some more, and stopped at Seligman. I know, it sounds like a law firm and not like a town, but it is - another one that has Route 66 as its main street, but this one seemed to make a big deal out of it:

 I got a room and the Romney Motel. The manager asked me where I'm from. I said I'm coming from Boston.

- "No, where are you originally from?"

- "Israel. Why? Where are you from?"

- "Israel! well, not me, but all my family lives in Bat-Yam".

Bat Yam is a shitty city, just a little bit south of Tel-Aviv, which was really surprising and definitely amusing. His wife passed away a while ago and his only son lives with his own famiy in Las Vegas, so this gentleman was saving money for his retirement, which is coming very soon, so he can move to Israel to live with his extended family in fucking Bat-Yam. 

I went to get dinner at "The Roadkill".

To my right, took place the most manly conversation I ever heard. Four guys were sitting at the bar, wearing working clothes, baseball caps, and they all had rough, dirty hands, with black stains underneath the fingernails.  One guy was talking about the deer he was hunting, and how it's too expensive now to take them to the butcher. I couldn't understand him fully because of his thick accent, but I assume he said something like "so now I have to cut them up myself" or "so now I stick my bare teeth in them and eat them alive".

By the time I gave up parsing what he said, he was talking about a 2-inch, externally-threaded, em, something, and then the other guy said "oh, that's what we used when we replace the motor of that old truck." I was praying that they won't turn to me all of the sudden and say "hey, stranger, what do you do for a living?"