Shanghai Excursion Part 2 上海旅游第二部分

(Continued from post below)
We had seen as much of the temple as we could see, we then decided to move on to something else when we stumbled into this sort of communist-era or precommunist-era part of Shanghai outside of Shanghai Old Street (上海老街). From the outside it looked a lottle seedy and rundown. But the most attractive thing about it was that there were no foreigners to be seen! At first Jesus (my friend, not the biblical figure) was a little unsure, but then I remembered how my neighborhood in Chongqing looks. It's not clean, and there are not any foreigners wandering about. I concluded that we should have a look because this is a part of Shanghai where normal people live! (Plus these old neighborhoods are slowly being replaced by highrises).
Each lump of housing was two stories, white, and a bit of ashen gray (probably from pollution or something else). Most of them had extremely narrow and square courtyards. Most of the courtyards had at least one dirty porcelain sink for washing and a bike or two. In one of the courtyards a door was open so I got a glimpse into a shabby white and blue tiled kitchen. In most of the alleys there were small black stenciled advertisements sprayed on the walls willy-nilly. Many of them were for electrical and plumbing repairs. Out the small windows and into the alleys people had hung their laundry to dry. The laundry gave the alleyways most of their color. Each little alley was about the width of 1.5 doorways. I really enjoyed walking along these narrow spaces because I could see what the everyday Shanghainese were up to! If I ever go back to Shanghai I will definitely need to return to these sorts of places!
The main drag led us back down another lively street (also lacking foreigners), it was something of a market street, except all the stores were mainly inside small establishments and not in little stalls. Past this street a building caught Jesus's attention, it was a dark looking brick building that we could just see over a blank white wall. This building looked like something that belonged in the French Concession. What was it doing here? We turned a few corners and voila we were at the gate...
Through the gate we saw that the building was surrounded by a shrubbery covered vacant lot that was about the size of a football field. The outside looked like it needed a few good coats of paint and maybe some new bricks, bit this didn't take away from how intriguing this place was (this building is hard to describe, I will have to post a picture). There was one visible entrance that opened onto a courtyard and a very dark hallway, I had a quick peek in, snapped a photo, heard some voices and then hightailed it out of there! At this point it was pretty dark so my nerves were on edge a bit.
Soon afterwards we met Dasha (Russian) and Alida (Swiss) at a frog restaurant. Or well a restaurant that specializes in serving frogs! I tried them, but I must say they were served like a sack of bones and organs so it didn't really appeal to me...However the noodles and rice hit the spot! Where we had dinner was a small street called "Little Eat Street" or "Snack Street." It's just a street lined with restaurants and extremely well lit because of all the restaurant's signs.
Then suddenly I had a craving, a craving for COOKIE DOUGH!
It would now be impossible to stop me, I was determined to have cookie dough. (You'd think the Cold Stone Creameries that Shanghai has would at least have cookie dough icecream...but no! And if you have ever been to Cold Stone with me you know that I get one "like it" with at least 4 mix-ins of cookie dough!). Everyone joined me in my quest, and our Italian comrade Clara met us at the nearest Carrefour to join in! (Carrefour is a foreigner-friendly grocery store, it's like a French version of Wal-Mart).
There we discovered:
1. No one in China knows what pre-made cookiedough is
2.Cinnamon can only be found in the spices section and the staff usually doesn't know what it is
3. Vanilla extract comes in the form of vanilla sugar (it's a substitute)
4. Brown sugar in Chinese is called "hong tang" red sugar (this caused a bit of confusion)
5.Make your own chocolate chips!
Thankfully we had the wonderful Dasha, she called her mother in Russia to make sure we had all the ingridients for the batter, and Clara helped us get most of the ingridients! Yay teamwork!
Late at night while Jesus and I were making the cookie dough his host Dad walked by on his way to the bathroom and peeked in. He seemed genuinely curious...I did not want to seem like a weirdo so I told him that making this dough was a Thanksgiving tradition in America....one makes the dough late night on Thanksgiving Eve and enjoys the dough amidst the company of friends. Thanksgiving was two weeks away, and it's a total lie! But it's fine. No harm done. :)
It all turned out that the dough was a little too brown sugar-y and the sugar wasn't very granulated. The movie we wanted to watch while eating the dough was not very good either...so we just went to sleep.
Day Four:
Since we were so busy with our Thanksgiving "traditions" the night before, we did not go to bed until quite late. Late to bed, late to rise, this keeps an exchange student happy, awake(through the day), and skinny (because you sleep through breakfast...this is not done on purpose!). We joined the other exchange students for lunch at the school cafeteria.
In the afternoon we met another American AFS'er (she goes to a different school) in The People's Square and subwayed it to the French Concession for dinner. When I thought of the French Concession, I thought about international restuarants and tree-lined streets. Well, we got the tree-lined streets but as it turns out we all were craving American style pizza...naturally we had Papa John's! (They don't have pizza in Chongqing!). Papa John's served on the sidewalk of the French Concession was truly lovely!
While we were eating a model started posing outside the display of a nearby wigshop. Out of curiosity I sent Magdelena (the other American) to take pictures of her. In the end the lady wasn't a model but a woman taking fancy pictures for her wedding album! Interesting!!

Later we walked around the famous Bund. Which is breathtaking, but after a few minutes one gets tired of Chinese vendors shouting "hello Rollerskates!" "hello Lights!" "hello Photo!" The word Hello has a different meaning over here. It means "Excuse me, move out of the way or else that car is going to run you over," "Please buy my goods," and "You're a foreigner!"

Soon we got over it and just decided to enjoy the scenery. I think my favorite building on the whole Bund is the clocktower. (When I returned to Chongqing I told people I had visited the Bund most of their responses were "Oh so many foreign banks there.")
Day 5:
On this evening we had all planned to go to a semi-well known Shanghai Dance club...When everyone was together and we had made it to the entrance we were turned down. The bouncer's excuse was that we weren't 18 yet. (This usually isn't a problem in Chongqing). There is no drinking age, and the drinks are far too expensive to drink, people just go to dance. After that huge disappointment everyone just decided to walk around the interesting part of town nearby.
This part of town is called Xintiandi.
Xintiandi looks very European, but I am not quite sure of the history behind it. It's a small area and most of the buildings are brick and Victorianesque. I have some pictures that I will try and post because I don't think words can do this part of Shanghai any real justice.
One of my favorite parts of this night was that I actually had cookiedough icecream from Cold Stone! The nice icecream people took the cookiedough from a pre-made cookiedough cake and scooped it out just for me! And they did it for free!!! I think they did it because there are seldom any Chinese speaking foreigners that come there!
Day 6:
Such a sad day! I had to return home and leave all of my Shanghai friends behind :(
Nothing much exciting and noteworthy happened on this day. However I do plan to return to Shanghai maybe early next year!