food, clubbing and shopping

Ni hao wo de jia he pengyo men!
(Hello my family & friends :))

How are you? I can't believe I've already been here for one month. I feel like my Chinese is really improving as I was just able to have a reasonable conversation with my neighbours in the elevator!! :D I also had a very amusing conversation with my masseur today. I had the privilige to give him an English name and as he was a fan of Michael Jackson (he even did the moonwalk for me ^^), it had to be Michael. I also finally found a decent bookstore with English books and magazines. Ofcourse the magazines were very overpriced, but the books were ok. But first I need to finish all the books you guys gave me just in case I couldn't find English books (I think I can forget about finding Dutch books...)

So last time, I promised you guys to tell you more about the food here, Shanghai's amazing nightlife and ofcourse shopping :D As for the food, a friend of mine said: If you are hungry, China is the place to be. Chinese food here is nothing like Chinese food in Holland (or Aberdeen) and ofcourse you can get the weirdest things like chickenfeet (yumyum) or suck bone marrow through a straw (!!). You can get any kind of food in Shanghai, from very cheap to very expensive and decadent. I find cheap food is so much more tasty than expensive western meals here :P My personal favourites are the 10 eurocents Xiao Kao that everyone will warn you against (it's street food, but always barbequed in front of you and as I don't eat meat I have not (yet) experienced nasty tummy-aches), the 80 eurocents fried egg&veggies noodles/rice next door, the very spicy shrimp on a stick in a Hu Nan province restaurant one block down and the egg&tomato dish at another place. I could on for ever and I hope to bump into more yummy food! I really recommend just trying to discover different kinds of China's food instead of sticking to what you know. Ofcourse you can get KFC, McDonalds & Domino's, but not only are the prices exactly the same as in Europe, while it's not as good to be honest...

A night in Shanghai... Well, what can I tell you about that. I could give you the names of a few clubs here like M1nt, M2, bar 88, but I doubt you'd know what I'm talking about. Like for food, you can pay 1 euro for anykind of drink you want, or 6 euro's for the cheapest beer, it depends where you are. You can get any kind of atmosphere, from jazzy to techno music, from only locals or expats to "mixed" as they say over here. Some bars have really nice views on the Bund, but ofcourse a nicer view increases the value of your beer. O! And there's this really cool service over here if you don't know the adress or don't know how to tell your taxidriver :) you just call the "Magic Number", tell them where you want to go and they tell the taxidriver (Shi Fu) where he needs to go. It's just perfect and the person who thought of it is  a genius!

Shopping! They say everything in China is negotiable. It's true. At the fake markets at least. I haven't tried my bargaining skills out on the western shops in the shopping malls yet, to be honest I think they will probably kick me out in Prada... But most things you can get for half the price or less (depending on your skills) than the first price they give you. My male friends here are crazy about watches, so I'm now an expert in buying watches. Just like bags, you have different levels of fakeness eq. quality of watches. If you want to check out the very-close-to-perfect copies, you usually go round the back, where they have a secret closet stuffed with better quality bags/watches/sunglasses. Make sure you know what you're looking for and stick to your price. I almost bought a beautiful (fake) Marc Jacobs bag, but the lady wouldn't go below 360 yuan. :( She started with 500, so I still thought it was too expensive. Maybe I'll go back later...

I have a dictation tomorrow, where they teacher will say the words in Chinese and I will write the characters, so I have to go study... Yes. Besides eating, clubbing and shopping I still go to school, don't worry! ;)

Keep me updated!! xxx & love from Evelien