Shanghai
10/27, Sunday. At the immigration gate, I need to request a special entry card (not readily available). There were a few of us going this way. I need to fill in lodging address in China, and a ticket to leave China within 6 days. Took some time, but it went smoothly.
Bought a prepaid sim at the airport arrival. Need foreign passport to register for this type of "hello" termed packages. I bought a 30 day card. I installed the sim in my spare phone, where I downloaded a few Chinese apps, and agreed to all permissions they asked. Then I took the subway from Pudong airport to downtown.
10/28-30, working from home, which is difficult. Jetlag is 9 hours apart, so my working hours are ~1am till 10am. I had installed 2 VPNs ahead of time, neither worked in China. Oddly, one of the VPNs worked on my phone, but not on my laptop. Cannot connect to the machines in office. Through a friend, over lunch, met his student who's working in an IT company. He gave me his VPN account. Not easy to use, need to select from a list of servers who's constantly changing. If one gets shut down by the government, try another. Couldn't get this working the first day, so had to request a day off.
I was in China to close a bank account that was opened for a classmate, and I haven't touched for 10+ years. I reactivated the account, got a new debit card, and withdrew some cash. Each day only allows me to convert $500, after filling out many forms. Recruiting friends and relatives to convert the money to USD and wire out to me.
Met a college roommate briefly before she heading to the airport for work. She and I talked about our parents, who were in need of assistant.
10/30, Wednesday. VPN not working. Had to take off today.
Visited the temporary exhibition of Dunhuang 敦煌 caves at the National Art Gallery 中华艺术宫. ~$15.
It's a striking building. Huge. Very red. The warp is due to my silly phone camera. Everything is straight.
It was confusing at first, where to go.
I like this exhibition, though it was quite crowded.
Most of the exhibits are replicas and they were painstakingly reproduced by hand.
I like those "caves", with paintings covered on all sides.
A lot of security guards. English explaination on almost every object.
There's a digital exhibition of
清明上河圖 ($2.5)
in a different room.
I bought a ticket and went.
Really liked it. It's magnified to real-life size, with lights illuminating slowly to simulate a different scene for day and evening.
Then, I walked around every floor (some are empty) to check out other exhibitions, no charges.
Other than a group of highschool students from a different town, no many visitors in these free exhibitions.
A large room of revolutionary paintings.
A large room of everything Shanghai.
A hallway full of replicas of famous European paintings.
A large special exhibition of 朱松发's rice paper painting.
Rugged, strong, dryer ink. A lot of writing on the scroll, sometimes more than the drawing.
A few works are as big as a whole wall.
I was the only viewer here.
A combined exhibition of two wood cutters.
陈琦 (Chen, Qi) and
Kobayashi Keisei (小林 敬生).
I enjoyed the works of both of them.
Chen, Qi's is often whimsical. Kobayashi's is fantastico.
Again, I seemed to be the only viewer in this room.
In the evening, dad and I settled on which flight to leave China. I bought our tickets, and then a ticket from Jeju back to Shanghai (allows me another up to 6 days free of visa), using my new debit card.
11/6, Wednesday. Flew back to Shanghai in the morning from Jeju. At the airport, this time I kneww what to do.
First, met with a relative for money transfer.
Next, met with a highschool friend for lunch at the traditional 王家沙，a dimsum-like restaurant I used to love as a kid.
We then went to Long Hua Temple (龙华寺) to light an incense stick.
The temple ground had plenty visitors, but not busy. Well maintained, quite some fresh flowers.
I'm staying at the same hotel with dad for the last few days. We had a dinner with dad's former colleagues, all about his age. I met a few of them before, the rest, I heard their names. Dad reserved a private dining room on the 2nd floor. A lot of food.
11/7, Thursday.
Breakfast buffet at the hotel: quite good.
Dad and I took a bus to downtown. He closed one of his HSBC bank account.
Dad lead me to some landmarks in the vicinity, especially on 东平Road.
Now many of them have a plaque. Dad also remembered what they are.
We also walked by US consulate: security around the intersection.
Took a taxi home. Now, it's actually not easy to hail a taxi without an app.
Paying cash is also not as easy as using Wechat Pay or Ali Pay.
11/8, Friday. Took me a few tries to catch a taxi to the airport. Leaving China with dad, the last time!
