May 16 (Day 9)

Our schedule today includes a tour of the GM plant, the stock exchange, and a lecture on Chinese culture. I never toured an auto plant and I enjoyed seeing the assembly line and the automation. So many hands touch a car before it reaches the showroom. GM is doing well in China. Believe it or not, the Buick line is considered real luxury in China. It’s the equivalent of Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes in the U.S. I noticed that the Chinese car models tended to have more chrome than the U.S. models. I suppose that caters more to the taste of the Chinese consumer. No pictures or video were allowed in the production facility so I can’t offer a visual of the facility. The tour was along a catwalk suspended from the ceiling and overlooked the shop floor.

Next, we visited the stock exchange. The building was pretty cool, but since very few traders were on the floor, I felt it was a waste of time. Their stock exchange was totally automated so traders work remote and dialed into the system. It was nothing like our chaotic stock exchange floor. There were no brokers yelling buy/sell orders. In fact, it was eerily quiet. I felt like I was visiting a museum, a relic of the past. I may have witnessed the future of the U.S. stock exchange.

That night we went to Nan Jing road in old Shanghai. It’s a shopping district that is popular with tourist. The peddlers were out in full force, but I noticed that they were more discrete and less aggressive. Shanghai does not tolerate the behavior that we witnessed in Beijing and Xi’an. We saw a gang of government inspectors roam the tourist areas and confiscate illegal goods from Chinese street peddlers. Those they didn’t seize were sent packing. I could tell the sellers feared them because they forgot all about trying to make a sale once they got a glimpse of them heading their way. They packed their stuff and disappeared. I have to admit that this group of inspectors were intimidating. They roamed in a small pack and were some of the biggest Chinese men I’d seen in the country. They were kind of like a pack of bullies. They looked fierce and could have easily moonlighted as club bouncers. They snatched one guy up, literally, that was selling tea and took his whole supply of tea right on the sidewalk. I don’t speak Chinese, but I did understand the harsh tone that they used with the vendor meant trouble for him. So where were these guys when I was barraged by street peddlers everywhere else in China?

Because of the inspectors, the Shanghai sellers approach tourists differently. They couldn’t just yell out on the street all willy nilly because that would invite trouble. Instead, they identified tourists and discretely displayed a palmed card with pictures of knockoff designer purses, clothing and watches on it. If you were interested in the inventory on the card, you left the beaten path and followed them down a maze of back alleys to their “store”. The “store” usually consisted of a small room crammed with merchandise. Alex and I checked out a few. Our system was to post one person at the door while the other person looked around. Since we were a little bit off of the beaten path, it was best to have someone on guard for anything suspicious.

On our first trip, Alex looked at some watches and I was stationed near the open door. The guy that led us there was in the shop along with a female that was helping Alex. At one point, she walked over and tried to shut the door. I, driven by fear, paranoia or instinct (I’m not sure which), sprung into action and grabbed the door. I told the young woman that I was uncomfortable with the door closed given our unfamiliarity with the area. She said she was just closing it because the air conditioner was on. That was a nice try, but I wasn’t buying it. There were some other Chinese people in the alley and I told her that as tourists we were outnumbered and had to be cautious. She alertly pointed out that we were bigger than them so if anyone should worry about their safety, it should be them. She had a point, but I also know that some Jackie Chan fighting skills from them can quickly negate any size advantage on our part. I’m not saying that they were kung fu masters, but then again, I can’t say that they weren’t. Anyway, the door stayed open. I did relax on some of our later trips into the alley when I finally realized that they were actually trying to preserve that precious air conditioning.

Later on that evening, Alex and I met two college students that were siblings. They were also visitors to Shanghai from their rural hometown. Naturally, we were a bit leery of them at first because we thought they were selling something. They turned out to be harmless, though. The girl’s name was Li Yon and her brother’s name was Li Jia. Her American name was Suzy and he didn’t have an American name. Suzy decided to give us Chinese names. She decided that my American nickname, Chi (pronounced Chee), could serve as my Chinese name. It was spelled differently in Chinese, but it was pronounced the same. Qi actually means seven in Chinese.

Suzy and her brother were two wild-eyed kids in the big city and were as much tourists as us. Suzy’s English was excellent and she put it to good use. She talked non-stop at a rapid pace and had a quick wit about her. She bounced from one topic or question to the next in a free spirited manner and was fun to be around. She majored in English and proved to be an excellent translator. I found that humor is universal and Suzy had a great sense of humor. She had Alex pegged from the start and cracked a number of little clever jokes on him during the course of the night. She was also a born teacher and taught us a little Chinese. I was a better student than Alex and she kidded him to be more like me (the teacher’s pet I guess). She suggested that I tutor him as he was demoted to remedial Chinese.

Suzy and Li Jia were headed to a tea festival and invited us along. The “festival” turned out to be more of a ceremony. Our host seated us in a small room around a wooden tree trunk that was converted into a table. We had a great time laughing, learning and sipping tea. We learned what the various teas did for the body as well as myths about them. We also learned how to drink the tea and the proper way to hold the little tea cup. We were having a great time and all was fun and games until the bill arrived. We tried about six different teas and three kinds of seeds/nuts to complement the drink. The bill was split four ways and we each owed the equivalent of $40. For a little bit of freakin’ tea, are you kidding me!?!? When I say a little bit of tea, each tea serving was consumed in three sips. In fact, that was the way to drink it. I couldn’t believe it was so expensive. Our host went on about the quality of tea, but I couldn’t have cared less about the quality. I sure hadn’t had enough to know the difference. Do you know what $40 would buy you in China? With this exception, prices are dirt cheap in China compared to the U.S. I could have done so much more with my 280 yuan and I blew it on tea.

To make matters worse, we received a Chinese knot at the end of the ceremony. Talk about adding insult to injury. I felt like the lousy t-shirt slogan. “I overpaid for Chinese tea and all I got was this lousy knot”. If this was a scam, Suzy and Li Jia did a great job of acting. We did a worse job of hiding our level of pissivity and they felt really bad about the misunderstanding. I decided that they were genuine. They even asked if our new found friendship was in jeopardy. We assured them we were still friends, but they insisted that Alex take some tea that Li Jia had bought as a gesture of goodwill. Alex had planned to buy the same tea before the bill came and we realized we were poor. Li Jia actually had to cover part of our tab on his credit card because we hadn’t brought enough money with us. We didn’t want to leave him with our debt so we decided to all share a cab back to our hotel so we could pay him back.

The ride back to the hotel was another ordeal. Remember, how I mentioned the crazy drivers in China that I saw from the bus window. Well, now we were in a small cab with one. The ride was so crazy that Jason got carsick. The exhaust, pollution, jolting, speeding, near misses, etc. proved to be too much for his stomach. I told you that they were sheltered kids from the Chinese countryside. So picture this, we are speeding through Shanghai on our way back to our hotel while Li Jia is hanging out the back window puking into a plastic bag. By the way, the cab driver just happened to have one on hand. Now, if you readily have sick bags available, you might want to re-evaluate your driving. Suzy only fared a little better, she got queasy in the front seat, but managed to keep her dinner and tea down. Alex and I managed with no problems. We were still a little steamed about the tea, but we eventually overcame that feeling. In the grand scheme of things, the price of the tea was a small price to pay for the friendships and the memories we established that night. We exchanged email addresses and promised to stay in touch. Alex knighted Li Jia with the American name of Jason. Li Jia was very appreciative of the gesture and I bet he'll give his American name as Jason when he meets some more Americans.