On Friday a friend of ours from Soccer asked if we would like to see the Shanghai team play in the China Super League, given we are now Shanghai residents we thought we would tag along, after all we were promised some wonderful Chinese Hotpot before the game......more on that later.
Friday night was pretty laid back, involved Sherpas for dinner, I had a Cheeseburger Pizza while Alyce went for an interesting combination of Sausage Rolls with Fries and German Spatzle (noodles). We also popped down to our local wine guy who is now our best friend, we are VIP's with him apparently and often get calls on a Saturday morning to go to his wine tasting events. So a bottle of wine later we settled in for a night of food, wine and Buzz on the Playstation.
On Saturday we were up pretty early (10am, its early for us). Not knowing what to do we headed to Wujiang Lu for some brunch at Wagas, they do pretty good food although Alyce decided to eat her lunch as we walked down the road after leaving the cafe rather than at the cafe where I had mine. We then headed to Honey Drink, a fav place of Alyce's, I think we go there about 6-7 times a week, they now know what Alyce orders without an order even needing to be placed. For those that are wondering Alyce has a Choc Shake with Sago (weird jelly ball things).
Before I go on I need to back track a little to keep the story in context......SO........when we moved to Shanghai I told Alyce that she will need to get herself an English soccer team to follow, after going through the various websites of all the teams a few months ago, after looking at the players photos and their outfits, Alyce decided she would 'support' Chelsea. Not a bad pick given they have been in the top 3 teams for the last however many seasons. Since that date I have been promising Alyce I would get her a Chelsea top to call her very own.
So back to drinking the weird Honey Drink we wandered down to the fake market and got 1 genuine fake Chelsea top. Haggling the store owner from 180RMB to 60RmB although given how fast she accepted the offer I think we could have got it for 40 or 50RMB easily. Any who, Alyce had her own top which for the record looks pretty spunky on her. (Photos attached).
With a few hours to kill before we needed to meet our friends we got a taxi to Taikang Lu, an area synonymous with art, basically a maze of alleys amongst peoples houses where you can eat, drink, paint, learn kung fu, buy crafts or as we found out from a work friend we bumped into, you can do pottery, which as he told us is "good for picking up chicks." Any who........we popped into a few art stores and chose a photo we are getting mounted next week, they are pretty expensive but will look fantastic in our place. We also had a few frames made so we can frame our own photos we have taken over the last 5 months.
We then scooted home and got ready for the HUGE clash between the Shanghai team and the top of the table Shandong team. Jumping on the train we had to make a few changes to get onto the correct line where the stadium is. One thing we found odd is that when we got off to change trains the Shanghai fans that were on our train stayed on and kept going. Knowing we were doing the right thing.......well so we thought, we continued on our way in search of this amazing hotpot.
We arrived at the stadium and met Cammy our friend who took us into the restaurant which is literally at the stadium. He mentioned as we walked in that we might struggle for a table as it is always busy on game day, again another weird thing happened, the restaurant was empty. Again no big deal, "sometimes only small crowds come to the games" he said. Going into the restaurant Alyce was skeptical about Hotpot, did not sound good to Alyce but we both agreed it was delicious and certainly something to do again. The game was due to kick off at 6.15pm and by 5.30pm the restaurant was still empty so cam called his friend and found out the game was actually being played in another stadium in Pudong (the other side of the river). So off we went again, this time we got a train back to the middle of town, then changed to another one in Pudong that took us to the stadium. Finally in right........wrong!!! Apparently there are no ticket gates in this stadium so how do you get tickets? WHO KNOWS!!! There was security at every gate and from what we could see all you need to do is push past them and RUN.....this tactic was employed by a number of local Chinese and it seemed to work. By now it was 30 minutes into the first half, Cam had a season ticket and another friend of his dropped a ticket over the stand so we could get it. So we had 2 tickets with 4 people......Cam and his mate went in and dropped their 2 tickets to Alyce and I, we tried to get in but because the game stub had already been removed we were denied. So we went to another gate, after a few minutes of 'discussion' they gave in and let us in, probably because it is too hard dealing with non mandarin speaking people haha.
So in the end we watched the second half in the middle of the Shanghai cheer squad, fair to say it was the best half of football I have ever seen (not because of the quality of the skills, moreso the bizarre goings on inside the stadium) and from the translations, Chinese sports fans take opposition fan abuse to a whole new level. End result Shanghai 3 - Shandong 2.
By now Alyce and I were pretty stuffed, we crammed onto the train and headed home for a quick shower. Given Alyce is a "hardcore" soccer fan now we went to an English pub for a late late snack and a few drinks while we watched Liverpool play. At about midnight we headed home and prepared food for the Grand Prix the next day.
We were up at 8am on Sunday as we had a taxi picking us up with our friends Anish and Hima at 9am outside our place. We drove for just over an hour to the Shanghai International Circuit before getting out and seeing the track. Once we got out of the cab there were a number of fine hawkers selling binoculars and ear plugs. We got 2 sets of disposable earplugs and I have the hawker 10RMB. He then told me they were 10RMB each (only about $2 each) but I thought that was a rip off so tried to take my money back. Of course this fine citizen did not want to lose the sale so refused to give it back, telling me that 10RMB is fine for 2 pairs. But I was not happy with this, so I told him I want 5RMB change and I will pay 2.50RMB per pair. Not a big deal but this guy was rude so after a few minutes of "discussing" we paid RMB for 2 pairs......VICTORY was sweet.
We made our way through the gates and to stand C where the four of us were sitting. Stand C was actually 6 stands, Anish and hima were in 2 and we were in 6 so we split up and went to watch the action. When we got there we had pretty good seats, right on a hairpin corner and we had lots of room as it seems people only come for the main event not the pre race stuff.
So we had most of the day to relax although it was pretty hot so the water guys were making lots of money from us. The race was ok, kinda boring as nothing really happened........cars just went round and round haha (for you mum). Still for our first time at the Shanghai Circuit it was fun and Alyce enjoyed her first F1 experience.
The real fun started trying to leave the circuit, a word of warning for those wanting to go to a sporting even in Shanghai that is not in the city. (we experienced this at the tennis centre as well, which is also an hour out of town). Taxi drivers magically turn into a$$holes at the events, they no longer seem to have a meter and will charge whatever they like as a fixed rate. The challenge is you cant say no as we were in the middle of nowhere so what do you do? So taxi after taxi told us it would be 500RMB to take us home (costs us 150RMB to get there by the way), so taxi after taxi we said no! occasionally we could get them down to 400RMB but even this was too high. Finally we had a guy offer us 300RMB so we took it.
By now we were so tired so we got a quick feed at a local Chinese restaurant and headed home for an early night.
No comments:
Post a Comment