crickets, fish, and birds
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This morning we failed to find a river tour that could complement the tour we'd already done of the streets. So we made our own.
That came later in the day. Our first jaunt was to the French Concession to a market for birds, insects, and fish. Crickets are kept for luck in China, and the crickets were kept in small jars that let their bellicose sounds ring out all over the place. The din really was something, with the birdsong and the cries from the larger birds adding to the various insect sounds.
And yet it wasn't enough for everybody. There were two fellows manning a table with a few cricket jars. One of the fellows was dangling his keys above the jars, presumably to provoke the crickets into making their sounds.
And then there were the fish stores. Most of the stores, even the smaller ones, had fish that were in excellent shape. Some had truly outstanding arrangements, too. By happy chance, I'm setting up an aquarium back in Tokyo, and I managed to pick up a few odds and ends for a fraction of their cost back home. I just have to hope that the one bottle of darkly coloured water treatment liquid doesn't come loose. Also, I have doubts that the bright blue aquarium backing sheet is going to survive uncrumpled.
By happy chance, we came across one of the restaurants run by migrants from the Xinkiang region in north-western China. The food was nothing like "Chinese food" and I for one welcomed the spicy variety and synthetic tastes (various ingredients). It was just a hole in the wall but wow that food was great.
After the market we sauntered about the French Concession's shopping streets looking for omiyage. Shanghai is supposed to be a great city for buying silk, but everything we saw was either too grandmotherly (even for the grandmas on our list) or too cheap or both. We decided not to load people down with unnecessary trinkets from a place they haven't been.
After playing in the park around the Shanghai Museum (Shanghai, sadly, is a "stay off the grass" city) we decided to do our river trip.
Well, river crossing is probably a more accurate term. We took a twenty minute cab ride for the few blocks (d'oh) to a ferry terminal that was surrounded by a wide apron of dynamite prooving construction territory. The trip itself was fairly short, perhaps only fifteen minutes, but it afforded a great view of both the old side of the city as well as glitzy Pudong. Of course on the far side there was more construction and a good deal of the riverside was walled off by private clubs and whatnot. With the half hour of cab ride and twenty minutes of wandering on the Pudong side looking for a way to the water's edge, we managed to lose the sunset entirely, but it was still worth the visit.
Surprisingly, the cab ride back from the other side took only ten minutes, as the cab was able to dive through one of the three tunnels that now cross the river.