shanghai, more like shang-bye

yo everyone! it feels like an eternity since I've posted one of these! we are currently in Bangkok, Thailand. Woody, after incessantly claiming that he has the stomach of a GOD has finally succumbed to the 'ol case of the runs. Poor Woods...everybody, please send him some love. (Note: Don't worry Lotus, Jerry, and Scarlett...we have fed him congee already!)

OK, so here's the scoop on what we've been up to! After you last left us we...

1. Went bowling in Shanghai. It was quite an ordeal as is all things when it comes to ex-pats in China. Yes, rolling balls at 10 pins lined up in a triangle was involved, but so was the shooting of a music video (which, yes, is about 5 days deep in post production). Woody is assigned to write up the details.

2. Went to another slammin' DJ party at Bon Bon where Woody's friends Adrianne and Adam spun the Chinese hits like it was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. I have no idea what that means, but the crowd did go wild when the DJ played "One More Time" by Daft Punk...which according to DJ Woodman is the best dance song ever.

3. We ate crawdads. i thought they were delicious, but others may have other opinions.

4. Tried to get authentic
and eat snake and frog, but I couldn't do it. They make you pick out the one that you want, and that freaked me out. Because, in the end, I would know that I was eating a frog that I actually pointed out, and that is just wrong.


5. Met this chick

For those of you that don't know her, she is Angel Tang of MTV fame, VJ extraordinaire for MTV Chi.

6. Speaking of fame, to top it all off, Woody did a photo shoot for SH magazineI'll be sure to bring home copies to everyone! (Sorry Woods, I had to!)

SUMMARY

Shanghai is an amazing city that really awakens at night. It also helped that we had the insight of some amazing people. Shout out to Adam, Chris, Mike, Candace, Ingrid, and the rest of the Shanghai crew (who are loyal readers of this blog now! HA!) When they throw a party, you better believe it's BANANAS!

In conclusion, Shanghai is pretty much America but with all Chinese people (and a surprisingly amount of white people), but it can be totally China if you want it to be (please see #4). Many people have said that Shanghai is like no other Chinese city, and now I see why. My favorite city so far!

We're coming to the end of our trip. It has been an amazing time. But stay tuned, we still have to tell you about Thailand and Ctown's run in with the "ladyboys!"

"Ladyboys, ladyboys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"

Quackers!

Here is the exclusive stand-up comedy stylings of Quackers, the headless chicken stand-up comedian. If you consider yourself a person of taste and refinement, do not watch. If you like puns and don't mind headless chickens, this is pretty much tailor made for you.

roller rink extended remix

here's some footage of the roller rink extravaganza -- sorry some of it is a bit dark but hopefully you'll get the idea:

Still alive -- harder than you think

I almost killed someone on the Great Wall in Beijing.



What you can barely hear over the music in the beginning is me saying, "I'm scared." The steps are of uneven height and the incline is ridiculously high. I put my water bottle in my bag so that I could hold onto the railing and take what I thought was going to be standard footage. When my arm squeezed against my bag, my water bottle got pushed out. There were a couple things to note from that footage: 1. The guy was really cool about almost dying. 2. Woody's first reaction was to laugh at the guy 3. I kept the camera rolling the whole time. Wow.

Number 1 and 2 lead me to believe it wasn't that serious, but I was really scared for about half a sec. Whenever someone does anything humiliating/bad, we've been calling it "The-person's-name Reel." For instance, this almost homicide goes on The Cynthia Reel.

The rollerskating party last night was a blast.



Woody is currently cutting together a rollerskating montage, so I won't go into detail, except to say it felt great to really go out for once! And with fun people who spoke English. It felt like home. Thanks to Adam and Adrian for inviting us! A lot of the people there were from Australia or Europe. I don't think they thought I could speak English at first.



PS. Rollerskating while dancing is hard, but try this:



That, my friends who are not familiar, is a toilet that is commonly found in China. One basically squats down like if you were out camping. Also, you need to bring your own toilet paper since they rarely provide it for you. We've been pretty lucky with finding regular toilets, and all of our hotels have them, but I still get pretty anxious if I have to go the bathroom while we are sight-seeing. The actual act is not that bad. It's more the smell. Also, the stalls rarely lock and they only come up to my chest when I stand, so there isn't really any privacy.

Now for some random highlights from Beijing and Shanghai:

- As Woody mentioned, he began heavily sniffing out bootleg dvds in Beijing. It is always a semi-shady industry. The first time, a man approached us while we are walking out of the Silk Market (underwhelming, btw). He took us to a nail/hair salon, and they rolled out a suitcase from a closed room.



- Here is a mobile bootleg music stand in Shanghai. Everything is still attached to the bicycle. Handy for a quick escape!



- While walking along a night market street in Beijing, I saw a Chinese sex shop for the first time. Apparently, 1977 Arnold Schwartzenegger is the epitome of manhood.



- Latest fashion report: You know what's so hot right now? Full face visors.



- Here is a late, but promised picture from the hot springs.



- Our first day in Shanghai, we went to YuYuan Garden. It is hard to find because they built a shopping labyrinth around it. It was built in the 1500s as a private garden, but is now open to the public as "an excellent model of classical Chinese gardening."



- I leave you with some behind the scenes footage. After our climb on the great wall, we ate at a restaurant at the base of the wall. The waitress recommended a dish that you can't find anywhere else, so we got it. It was a boiling cauldron of a whole chicken including the head. Our parents wouldn't have any issues with this, I'm sure, but being semi-vegetarian anyways, I was already not into eating it. It made Simon lose his appetite, especially after we spent 20 minutes coming up with puns and Simon shot "Quackers: The Headless Chicken stand-up comedian" voiced by Woody. This is prob the only footage you will see of it since no one has the stomach to cut it.



The chef is probably wondering what is wrong with us. Answer: as LCD soundsystem would say, we are North American Scum.

shanghai update

we've been in shanghai for 3 days now. out of all the places we've been to, this is my favorite. it's the most "westernized" but it's also not... you can see it in the architecture and in the way people dress and act.

Before I go any further I would just like to say that we finally found our "di tans" (street markets)... they're basically hole in the wall stores that sell crap. But unique, can't-get-it-anywhere-else crap. Not bad lacoste/polo ripoffs but stickers of robots and laminated cards of canto pop stars, stuff like that. we found this amazing place where these guys just had their boxes of toys spilling out into the streets, and it was like new arrivals day or something because they had a bunch of new boxes loaded with cheap, multi-colored toys:





Also you may wonder what happens to cute plush toys no one wants anymore... they end up in the CUTE PLUSH TOY GRAVEYARD:



I am now a firm believer that you need a friendly local in whatever area you plan on going to. without one, we were like our parents: going to temples, monasteries, etc. there's nothing wrong with that but our impressions of the cities we went to were very traditional and conservative.

anytime we've hooked up with a local (sylvia in HK, monica in guilin) our impressions of the city were greatly improved. I guess it's kind of obvious to say that now, but this point was driven home last night when we went to an expat party in shanghai. Adrian hooked me up with his buddy Adam, who throws this roller rink party where they play nothing but disco. Quick shout outs to Adam, Mike, Dan and Chris and of course Adrian for the hookup for a great time. The party was insano-vision. Adam was good enough to let me get on and at the end we switched off song for song. Here's a quick video of what it was like from my POV... the people stage right are rollerskating, you can't really see them b/c there's no lighting on the floor:



On an unrelated note, here's a video of me almost dying: