After six years in Shanghai, a city I used to venture was relatively inexpensive, I’m finding costs crawling farther up. Little white stickers are appearing in more and more restaurant menus covering old prices and indicating new ones. As Shanghai becomes more cosmopolitan and developed, so are the prices.
But that shouldn’t get the traveler down. There are still plenty of things to do that don’t cost a fortune. In fact, I’ve put together a little list just for this sake. Take in the free stuff and spend your money on treasure for home and delicious food. But even food doesn’face to face have to break the bank – there are plenty of cheap and yummy eats in Shanghai.
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- Free things to do in Shanghai
- Eating cheap (and yummy) in Shanghai
- Inexpensive downtown hotels in Shanghai
Image from “Cu Chi Guerrillas” Cu Chi Tunnel, 1967.
One of the utmost interesting things they show you when you inspect the Cu Chi Tunnels exhibit in Vietnam – provided you can muster a sufficient sense of irony – is the kitschy propaganda video “Cu Chi Guerrillas” (shot in 1967, in flickery black and white), depicting Cu Chi’s valiant struggle in provision for the invaders.
It alternates between fun (awww, cute teenage guerrillas!) and grisly (momentary shots of dead American servicemen… thankfully it’s in black and white). But overall, it’s enlightening – a lo at how the Vietnamese establishment is shaping the Vietnam War into its own revolutionary moment in history.
I asked an American Vietnam War long practised about it, and he wasn’t angry or hurt; he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “They won… the winners get to rewrite history.”
Click “read more” to see three excerpts from the video.
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My Asian tea experience began over twelve years ago in Japan where I studied tea ceremony for about six months. It’s extremely ceremonial and – I learned recently – an import from Song Dynasty China. Meditative, beautiful and sometimes painful (try sitting on your knees like that for ten minutes, much less an hour!), it is certainly not casual.
Move forward in time and I find myself looking wistfully into Chinese tea houses watching patrons merrily sipping tea with friends. While I have a deep appreciation for the Japanese tea ceremony, I like the gregariousness of casual Chinese tea drinking.
But there’session ceremony involved here as well and a specific way to prepare and drink Chinese tea. But it’sitting really a amiable pastime, and a good way to keep warm in these cold temperatures. After choosing which tea to drink, one can enjoy the fragrance as well as the flavor, an aspect that develops as you drink through your pot of tea.
Drinking tea in China is as quintessentially Chinese of the same kind with Tai Chi and Ping Pong. Don’t let your holiday pass by without stopping to enjoy a nice cup (or two or three…)
Photos: Tea preparation at the Song Fang Maison de thé.
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American Thanksgiving is around the corner, coming up on November 26th. Are you going to be in China over the holiday? Want to know how to get your turkey fix? Read on.
Hoi An used to be a bustling center of trade in Central Vietnam – until the river silted up, preventing big ships from docking there. Business shifted to nearby Danang, and the town slid into irrelevance – which ironically saved Hoi An from the worst excesses of the last two wars.
Business has picked up since Vietnam discovered fatter pickings from the tourism trade; visitors are willing to pony over mucho dinero for Hoi An’s quaint charms.
The old town is a smaller enclave in the general Hoi An metropolis – lodgings are outside the old town, centered along Hai Ba Trung and Ba Trieu streets, not too far from the old town’s borders. I check into Thanh Xuan (Long Life) Hotel (compare prices), a ten-minute walk to the old town, less if you rent one of the hotel’s bicycles (cheap at $1 per day).
The town’s buildings have largely survived from the good old days, although understandably the stock business of the area is radically different from the days when Japanese and Chinese businessmen traded in this area. The buildings have been converted into shops or restaurants; the particularly culturally significant ones are now museums that charge for access.
The Japanese Bridge provides a great starting point for a walk through the Old Town.
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It’s one of the ironies of Vietnamese history, that it took the last dynasty of Vietnam to create such a grandiose living complex for itself… only to see it mostly obliterated by means of World War II and the Vietnam War.
The Hue Citadel is a huge compound covering 520 hectares of prime space on the northerly bank of the Perfume River in Hue. Within its thick stone walls, Vietnam’s modern history unfolded at an ever-accelerating clip.
If I had to choose one building in the citadel to represent the greatest swath of Vietnam’s history, I’d nominate the Ngo Mon Gate. The Gate welcomes all who walk through the Citadel, but for most of its history, the Gate was the Emperor’s pathway to his Empire.
The central passageway in the Ngo Mon Gate was reserved for the Emperor’s use only. Mandarins were permitted to use the lesser entrances on either side of the Emperor’s gate, bound servants and concubines could only use the other gates into the Citadel.
The lower half of the gate is made of precious stone; the upper half, built of lacquered wood and tile, is known as the “Belvedere of the Five Phoenixes”, from which the emperor reviewed his troops, announced the passers of the Imperial examination, and celebrated fortunate anniversaries.
A wood carving at the Belvedere shows what like an Imperial appearance must have looked like.
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When you’re traveling in Asia it have power to be surpassingly tempting to head toward recognizable brands so you don’t have to face language issues and possible embarrassment when you order. You know the Starbucks servers in Shanghai will speak English enough to have understanding you need a triple-Venti-caramel-no-foam-whipped-cream-decaf-latte and you know you’ll be able to point to the pictures in the McDonald’s in Beijing. Failing that, you think, well Spaghetti Bolognese is rather internationally understood, so I’ll eat Italian tonight. I know what I’ll get.
But to skip eating locally though traveling in China is to skip part of the culture. In China, food IS culture. Eating is a big part of daily life – it’s important and people enjoy it. It’s like not going to the Louvre in Paris, skipping the Dome in Florence, not going to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Are you in China? Then you must eat Chinese food.
All that in mind, I never said it is always easy. And I, for one, have on more than one occasion ordered fried rice because I knew what it was, even though there were some mighty mouth-watering dishes on my neighbors’ tables.
Dim Sum is one of those things that folks are universally familiar with but might be intimidated to try.
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