taxi!

a cross-cultural experience is made up of tiny moments.

sometimes the moments are small,

a brief smell, an intonation, a grunt, a walk.

sometimes the moment opens up and for a second,

you realize, i'm in china right now.

we stood on the streets of old city. we had just finished our first shanghai morning going to the park to see a sculpture exhibit of bushes carved into shapes for a national contest. we hopped on the shanghai subway to the park, went through the exhibit in the rain, then walked back to the subway to get off at peoples square, to walk around the main shanghai drag, and then took a bus to old city for steamed pork dumplins.

while we were eating i looked up and could see the street from the open door of the restaurant. all i could see where colorful umbrellas in levels moving up above the heads in stacking floors of umbrellas piled upon umbrellas, head above heads because there were so many people walking through the narrow streets. there are so many people in china you get the ant feeling. almost everywhere you go, people move about as numerous and seemingly insignificantly as ants crawling on the sidewalk. sometimes like this one, it forms beautiful weaves of brightly colored images rising above. it would be easy to feel like one of many in china if i didn'tstick out as the only white girl on the block. our dumplins were hot and our conversation light. the noise in restaurants, the slurping, the general absence of typical north american social norms apparent, we ate what bobby called the best pork dumplins he had ever had. several people ordered a large dumpling with a straw sticking out. we learned it is a dumpling filled with pork juice inside, supposedly very tasty although we passed on sampling the obvious restaurant favorite.

we left and walked through old city but the rain distracted me from the sights so i made a mental note to return when the weather was more apt for exploring. the architecture of old city is refined, freshly painted, and carved in ancient bridges and walls holding on to days of long ago with sculpted gardens and statues among modern shops and bustling people and bazaars. we rode an elevator to the sixth floor of a building looking for a jewelry shop only to find it had been raided and moved in the past few months to a new location. we stopped at the mcdonalds on the corner so i could duck into the ladies room. while i waited in line, serena bumped ahead of me even though she was not waiting a turn. she explained that the line concept is not big in china and showed me that if i did not aggressive stand my guard and wait my turn someone else would step in front of me like they did time and time again when she wasn't with me. a woman came out of a stall screaming and i thought, "oh great, that can't be a good sign i hope thats not my toilet." but when i asked serena she explained what the women were saying to each other in the bathroom. they were upset that there was a new western toilet in one of the stalls instead of the footprints and hole. the woman did not like the new western toilets and was expressing her anger to the rest of us to hear. later i realized another mcdonalds had two stalls one for workers another for customers. the worker stall had a traditional toilet while the customer stall had a western style toilet. i found this out after five people went in front of me and i learned i had to push my way to mark my place in "line." (by the way, we did not eat at a single mcdonalds i just ran into one twice for the lavatory)

when we were done musing the streets of old city we decided to catch a cab to a market. this seemed like an easy idea. a half and hour later, and three locations later we realized it was about impossible to catch a cab in shanghai in the rain. and then we got smart. we followed the taxi's to their drop off point. we watched people run up to the taxi, literally chase it down for a block (one in a suit and briefcase mind you) and open the door and jump inside with the passengers still inside the cab waiting to pay. we attempted this only to lose to more aggressive, savvy, and less touristy people than ourselves. and then we changed. we gotta fight for a taxi or we won't get one. period! i called upon my tiger. "bobs! go get us a taxi! chase it down! you can do it!" four loses and finally on the fifth time we got one! lesson learned: if you want to catch a taxi in the rain in shanghai you have to be aggressive and willing to RUN! (or send yr husband in for you).