When you only have 10 days to discover a new city and a new culture, you've gotta figure things out quickly, meet people, see the sights, get lost, and enjoy yourself... When there's a character-based language involved, an Eastern culture, confounding technology, and spectacular sights, sounds and experiences, the resulting first few days can be overwhelming and absurdly wonderful.I am here for an internship, in case you were, in fact, wondering how the heck I ended up in China this summer. So Friday I hoofed it to work, navigating the bikes, motos, and cars that defy the boundaries of sidewalk and road. After a few hours with my friendly new colleagues, I decided there should be an "Office Space, China." The office is one space, like a department store, that seems to transcend most cultural gaps - except the air here is filled with multi-tonal Mandarin and higher-pitched cellphones ring-tones. Then, of course, there are the difference like, say, being told, "you probably won't find any of this software stuff interesting, probably, since you're a girl..." (thought: "well, one of my brothers is an actor...") Ah, well.....
After work, I had a drink on a friend's friend's friend's rooftop in the French Concession - a lovely neighborhood with trees, micro-brew bars, Moroccan restaurants and many an expat. A large group later found its way to an all-you-can eat and drink sushi place where food, sake and beer keeps coming until you can't eat or drink any more. For only $3-a-head, this seems quite dreamy... until you can't bare the sight of a 2-foot tall sake bottle or the smell of shrimp tempura.
When the established, Shanghai residents went out for more drinks, I decided it would be prudent to take my still jet-lagged self back to the hotel, otherwise I might never get back. Visions of getting lost in a Chinese oblivion danced in my head. However, it occurred to me it might already be too late when my new friend Bob (fluent Mandarin speaker), with the combined effort of my "get home card," could not make clear to the taxi driver where I needed to go.
**A "get home card" is the business card or the piece of paper or even the text message that contains the information in Mandarin and phonetic Mandarin about where you need to go. You can show this and/or read this to your taxi driver. It should be fool proof.. Otherwise you will be driving around a strange city with no idea of where you are and no ability to tell your cabbie how to get you home.**
A taxi ride from the French Concession to my hotel should have cost ~15 RMB ($1.5).. 50 RMB later, my chick cabbie and I were telling each other emphatically in our respective languages that something was up, "DUDE.. this is NOT the hotel.." She called her English-speaking people and
I called my Chinese-speaking people and we swapped phones. Heated conversation ensued. The taxi driver lost face. But my lost self made it back to the hotel shortly thereafter with no cab fare to pay ("lost face" cabbie insisted). Another heated conversation and unintelligible debate. I end up winning (by using one of my 3 Chinese words -- "yes." Perhaps more loosing of face?). I handed her some yuan for the cyclical and bizarre trip.The next day an Indian yogi bent me into a pretzel at a random expensive but lovely studio, I managed two successful cab rides between my hotel from the French Concession, and I met up with a very old friend who flew in from Hong Kong to hang out. For dinner, we went to a place called "M" on the Bund from where you can observe the insane Shanghai light shows on the buildings (happy 4th) and the famous Oriental Pearl (see above photos with large skinny, glittering building). Dinner, a lovely French fare, lasted just over 3 hours and afforded us much time to catch up after a half-decade separation.
Later we had a drink at the nightclub/bar downstairs where (mostly) expats sat about looking swanky and stoic, all ignoring the thumping techno music. It was an odd crowd - but expat crowds tend to be - though not so impressive for people watching. The bold exception was an androgynous couple that swung its attention from male to female all night.
As Sundays should to be... mine was a lovely one, complete with a foot massage. It might have been marred by the discovery that my check card was gone but fortunately, my hotel is lovely and the manager located it in the ATM machine immediately when I called in the morning... somewhat in a panic. You see.. where most places give your card back before you get your cash, here in China, you get cash, then have to ask for your card. Oops.
Any way.. My friend and I masted the Shanghai metro (people are so helpful here) and found our way to the People's Square (see photo) where we wandered for a bit between the main street and side streets (see photo). We found "Shanghai's #1 Department Store!" and discovered that electronics have gotten ahead of themselves here. We found a lovely little shack for foot massages. We haggled for designer knock-off dresses. Mine has a sequined face on it. Necessary. We ate yummy pork dumplings that gave me a belly ache hours later. And we parted ways in the 
evening she for her apartment in Hong Kong and me for my swanky 5-star in one of Shanghai's many business districts.I have 4 more days in Shanghai before I head to Jinzhou in Hubei province. More adventures to come...
Lessons of the weekend:
* must learn some Chinese or continue to suffer the consequences of fruitless shouting matches between, say, taxi drivers who let me off in the middle of an intersection when I would prefer to be dropped on a curb and/or at/near a destination
* Chinese food tastes food but it doesn't necessarily do me good...
* Downtown Shanghai life is a light show... better than NYC at New Years
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