In Shanghai, post-Hefei

We were supposed to leave AAU at around 7:30am to catch our 8:24am train to Shanghai, but only got on a taxi at 7:50am. Han Shu and Cherry told the taxi driver something I’m assuming roughly translates to, “We need to move. NOW!”. As we rushed along the express way, Han Shu assured me that the trains are usually late. “This”, I was told, “is a good thing”.

We got there at around 8:12am or so, ran through the station—up/down the stairs (carrying the luggage!) and all—only to get there minutes before departure. Literally, minutes. We got in, found our seats and the train left the station.

It took 3 hours to get to Shanghai, with stops at Nanjing and Kanshan. At Shanghai, we walked about a block and a half away from the station and found a cab—it’s best, we were told, to not to take the ones right outside the station if we don’t fancy exorbitant cab fares—and asked the driver to take us to Fuzhou Rd, no 37.

I should’ve had the name and address of Captain Hostel ready to show to the driver, but somehow, I didn’t. But I’m glad our Chinese was sufficient to explain where we wanted to go.

Captain Hostel is a more luxurious hostel than I’d expected. It’s not exactly cheap for a hostel—we’re paying CNY 55/night—but the rooms, sleeping 7 or 8 each, are very clean. The staff friendly and cooperative, not to mention able to speak English (for the most part).

Fuzhou Road, I’d read, is known for its array of bookstores. About four blocks down from the hostel, I found (not without the help of locals who, I discovered, like responding in English to my asking them questions in Chinese) the Foreign Language Book Store. I found a nice book (by another Zhāng lǎoshī) that tries to explain the etimology of common characters, but the salesgirls trying to sell their Chinese-learning software were quite annoying. It was like verbal abuse, only with a lot of smiling and pure, unadulterated marketing babble. One of them even went as far as saying that I should buy the software for her sake! The design section was pretty interesting, although I couldn’t find many books about contemporary Chinese advertising design and typography. Will need to go back there tomorrow.

Writing this from my room in Captain Hostel, where there apparently is a WiFi connection. It’s flaky, but, unlike the computers downstairs, free.

More from Shanghai later. I’m off to bed.