I'm in China, man.

So I've arrived in Shanghai safely after a 2 hour layover in Hong Kong. For those who neglected to tell, I'm basically traveling through China before attending my brother's second wedding reception in Taipei on Xmas.

The trip over here really wasn't so terrible. Fourteen hours on a plane doesn't really compare with a 61 hr bus ride from NYC to LA, especially when you have free movies to kill the time, altho the crazies on the bus were occasionally fun to talk to. I haven't really flown much and don't know if this is really super common, but they actually had this feature on the headrest displays where you can watch a video feed from a camera that's attached to the bottom of the plane that's just behind the front wheel. I found it super interesting to watch during take off because the underbody of the plane would mirror the ground beneath it, and as the plane was taking off, it had this surreal tunneling effect that was mesmerizing to me. Unfortunately as we were flying to HK, we were basically chasing the shadow of the earth and the screen was black the rest of the time, but the take off and landings were sweet.

After arriving in Shanghai, we've pretty much been doing the touristy thing and been to the Shanghai museum and then walked down Nanjing Road(i think) that had (overpriced) shops all over the place. The things that have really been interesting me more is the driving around the city. It amazes me how people around here have so little regard for the road and how people still get around. Our tour guide basically said that the lights and road signs are mainly up for decoration. There's a ton of cars, trucks and buses zipping around everywhere disregarding the lights, signs and lines in the road and all the spaces inbetween are filled with bikes and mopeds. In a place like LA, the bikers and mopeds would die if they drive like they do here, but for some reason it just works, although I did see a moped totally nail a pedastrian while we were at Nanjing Road.

The food so far has been so-so. My parents got us a private tour package which includes food at select restaurants around the city. It's good to finally have some real chinese food, but I feel that I've had better food in the states. I'm not sure if that's because it actually is better or if it's because I'm just used to eating our food. I am pretty sure that the xiao long bao(the soup dumplings) that I had was pretty crap tho. The dumpling wrappings were pretty thick and weren't completely sealed. They also stuck to one another so that they'd tear open when you'd try to pick them up. The single dumpling that I got that didn't tear from sticking to another dumpling, simply because it was the last dumpling, didn't even have any noticeable soup inside of it. I'm really looking forward to going to the real ding tai fung(sp?) when I get to Taipei.

At the restaurant we went to tonight, my parents actually went there 3 years ago. It's some culturally obscure restaurant that I want to say was a thai place that served chinese food, because they had some stage show where they'd dance and play the flute or recorder and during the dances the girls wore the golden pointy finger things(wow i'm eloquent) that I've only seen during the traditional thai dances(i think). They also have these greeters that welcome you into the restaurant with cymbols, gong and drums. The funny thing was that some of these workers actually recognized my dad. If you guys know me at all, my dad is notorious for his balloon animal twisting. He has this balloon bag that he carries around with him EVERYWHERE, i shit you not. Apparently the last time he was there, all the workers came to the table wanting animal balloons and were neglecting the rest of the tables, and while they were dancing on stage, the dancer's eyes were glued to my dad.

For being a pseudo-professional photographer, meaning I've fooled people into paying me for taking pictures, I feel like my photos are pretty crap so far, but I've been a lot more proficient at my sketching while I've been here. I'm hoping to get some really good stuff while I'm here so I'll try to post those as they come too. I'm not sure how long I've been up but I feel like it's been forever so I'm going to crash soon. Hello China, here I come!