7 DAYS LEFT

The title says it all: one week left and I’ll be flying home. The other interns keep saying how time has gone by so fast and how they can’t believe that a month has already passed since our arrival. I, on the other hand, don’t  know what to say about it: to me it seems like I spent an eternity here, and at the same time it all seems like I dreamt; apparently I still need to process the fact that I spent a month interning in the biggest city in the world.

My last weekend in China was pretty intense, which was to be expected since I don’t have a lot of time left and want to make the most of time here in China.
On Saturday the weather was rainy, and rain on free days means of course… Museums. Museum in our case, since we only visited one, namely the Shanghai Museum in People’s Square.

After standing in a line for a good half an hour (which went by fast to be honest, notwithstanding the rain and the wind) we managed to enter the building, which on the interior looks more like a 3-stars hotel from the 1980s (no offense meant, of course). The museum is not massive by any means- on the contrary, we found it quite small, but not all disappointing: being massive fans of Chinese civilization we thoroughly enjoyed the sight of antique, beautifully painted porcelain vases, ancient paintings and fascinating scrolls.
After that, it was the turn for some shopping at People’s Square metro station, where I learned the following lesson: don’t get attached to any item in particular, because chances are that the shop next to the one you’re in (and the next one, and the next one…and the next one) will sell the exact same things, maybe at a more affordable price. Shopping in China takes time and patience, and a hasty person like me learned that the hard way.
The weather was much better on Sunday (and by “much better” I mean completely cloudy and humid but with no rain in sight) so my flatmate and I excitedly hopped on a train to Suzhou in the late morning, eager to see some of the old China. We met a Spanish girl at the railway station travelling on her own so our team ended to be made up of a grand total of 3 people.

After a pleasant 25-minute ride (Chinese trains seem to have the largest leg space ever) and a good 20 minutes spent at the Suzhou railway station trying to figure out our way to the historical part of the city, we finally arrived at the Beisi Ta- or North Temple Pagoda, one of the main attractions of the city. It was then the turn of the Humble Administrator’s Garden, which is probably the main attraction of Suzhou. It was my first time in a proper Chinese garden and I was delighted at the sight of pavilion’s and small lakes. Had there been less people to push their way around and call each other loudly I would have experienced a more peaceful and authentic state of mind, but one can’t have everything.

And it was precisely at the Humble Administrator’s Garden that it happened: a Chinese girl asked to take a picture with me. I had been told by other Westerners that it was likely to happen sooner or later, and it did.

It was after the visit to the garden that thigs started to derail. We booked a boat tour which turned out to be nothing that special, and the fact that the guide spoke exclusively in Chinese the whole time (we were the only Westerners) didn’t help. The whole group was then taken to an exhibition hall pretty far from the city centre where we were actually encouraged to buy silk; since we hadn’t been informed of that activity and we had paid money for something different I tried to speak to the guide but she didn’t look much interested in us. No one looked that much interested in us and I, being the only one in the group who could speak a little Chinese, started to feel a bit helpless because of this situation. That’s another lesson that I learned here: if you’re a foreign tourist, on your own and you can’t speak Chinese, you might get in big trouble.

Being fed up with the situation the three of us decided to exit the exhibition hall and luckily found a taxi driver willing to take us to the railway station (after dodging the abusive ones which were of course waiting outside for potential customers). In fact, we wanted to sightsee a little bit more but didn’t know where to go and how to get there; I still regret deeply not having prepared a better plan before our departure from Shanghai (in my defence, there was supposed to be seven of us on this daily trip, but the others bailed on us on Sunday morning).

However, our tribulation didn’t end there: since we hadn’t bought the return tickets in advance and the seats were all already booked we had to wait at the station for over 2 hours for the first available train, almost missing the last metro in Shanghai.

Once arrived at the hotel, I felt drained and not completely satisfied of the trip. And yet I realized how the huge Shanghai felt like home to me, and how pleasant it was.

 

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