China day 8: It all ends with a mall. Or five.

Ahh, the final morning in China. It dawned sunny and fresh and relaxing. Today, I was on a mission. I had managed to get all the way though the trip without finding a gift for my Fiancee, and today I was going to fix that. But what do you get a guy who won’t eat anything produced in China, has a long torso that doesn’t fit Asian sizes well, and doesn’t really appreciate souvenirs unless they serve some practical use? There goes my go-to fridge magnet idea. Crap. Needless to say, all my friends were all taken care of and the one person I know pretty much better than anyone is getting nothing. So my plan for the free morning was to hit the malls and find him the awesome gift of awesomeness.

Our guide had said that all the shops opened at nine, and since I’m not really one for sleeping in, I left at 8 to walk through the bustling streets of Shanghai and find those mega shopping malls I had seen in the dark last night. I knew approximately which skyscraper they were near, so I just started wandering, getting a real taste for daily life in Shanghai. The streams of people pouring out of the metro stations, the people walking their small, well-clothed dogs (coveralls? Parkas? Adidas track suits with matching trainers? On a Pekinese? Really?), the shopkeepers rolling back their metal security screens… it was lovely. Incredibly peaceful to walk around in this incredibly non-peaceful city. I loved it. I also had thought it was going to take me longer to reach the malls, as it had seemed much farther away at night. So I found myself in a KFC playing Angry Birds on my iPad, sipping the drink I had bought simply to justify my using their bathroom and table. Side note – somehow I had managed to make it all the way to Shanghai without using a squat toilet. Pretty much everywhere had well-marked western-style toilets, or at least a wheelchair accessable one (turns out, disabled people can’t squat), and worse case scenario I’d had to wait a few extra minutes to get the stall I wanted. But Shanghai ruined my streak. Nice comfy seated toilets were a lot harder to come by, but it had been an unexpectedly good run, lol .

Turns out the shops didn’t open at 9. I was there, all ready and waiting, and all the windows were still dark. So I wandered the streets of Shanghai, observing, window shopping in closed stores, playing more Angry Birds in another KFC with another drink for another hour. Turns out that had been some bad information from the guide, as everything opened at 10am sharp. On the upside, I was now very familiar with all the streets around this particular area of Shanghai, so I had a very small chance of getting lost on the way back to the hotel. Time to shop, finally. There were 5 malls here, each larger than it’s predecessor, and all specializing in name brand everything. Minimum of 9 storeys per mall, times 5 malls… I went up and down all of them, not wanting to miss the one thing that would be the perfect gift, tucked in the back of the top floor. This sounds like shopping wonderland, but it wasn’t. The malls were hot, all of them, with no air conditioning (that was turned on, at least), everything here was expensive (this was the first plae we’d been where the Pradas were real, with real matching prices), and they all sold the same things. It doesn’t make sense to build another mall right beside the first, and then fill it in with the same stores and products, but they’ve done it. Five times. The only major difference from one mall to another is how modern it looks. By the time the last mall spit me out into the Shanghai sunshine, I was sweaty, tired, kind of dizzy from the countless escalator rides, and empty handed. There really was nothing here in my price range, and what was were household appliances. I just couldn’t imagine coming home and being all like “here, Babe, I got you a rice cooker. I know it looks exactly like the one you got at Wal-Mart, but it’s special because I got it in China”. I had battled and failed, and at this point I was throwing in the towel. He was getting nothing, and I had made peace with that.

Back at the hotel, I cooled off, changed, watched some Asian music videos and made sure all my final packing was done before checking out any joining the group for our ride to the airport. I didn’t want to pack, it meant we were leaving China, and I was having such an amazing time that I could have stayed for longer. But Canada meant I could sleep at normal times again… Right there in the lobby, seconds before we boarded our bus, I went on to aircanada.com and checked our flight status, and it said our flight was going to arrive 15 minutes early back in Vancouver. Great news. Forty five minutes later, as we were all queued up for check in, the guy in front of me mentions that our flight is seriously delayed. Not great news. A collective gasp rippled through our group. We were all overtired, somewhat homesick, and braced for an 11 hour flight across the pacific, so this did not sit well. One agent, missing her kids particularly badly, burst into tears. I was one of the lucky ones ending in Vancouver, but for a lot of the other agents, this meant massive flight rescheduling, overnight stays in Vancouver or red-eye flights across the country. For our patience during the 6-hour delay, Air Canada gave us CDY$70 (CAD$12) food vouchers. We made a bee-line to Burger King (basically, the only option that wasn’t the same meal we’d been eating twice a day for the last week), and went to town. Turns out Burger King in the Shanghai airport is super cheap. Hell, it wasn’t our money, so we were going to spend ever penny of it. Our tables looked like we were feeding a school group as opposed to just 10 people, with everyone adding side salads at at least two bottles of water per person to their orders, knowing they could pack them with them on the plane.

I like the Shanghai airport, I really do. It’s big and nice and clean and has wifi everywhere, but there is not a hell of a lot to keep you interested for 6 hours. I bought a bottle of whiskey for my Finacee at the duty free (real whisky, not that paint thinner stuff I’d had confiscated in Beijing), which actually made him very happy. Go figure, all that worry for nothing. We were going stir crazy, suddenly finding stupid stuff really funny, and pacing around just to keep the blood flowing before being confined to our airplane seats. It was after 11pm by the time our plane finally arrived at the gate, and the second we saw it coming we cheered. We then cheered for the people disembarking (hoping it would get them off faster) and cheered for the crews to load the meals and luggage as fast as possible. Hey, it was something to do. The flight itself was fine, and soon (but not as soon as planned!) we were back in Canada.

The fantastic China trip, AKA “the Amazing Race” was over. I hate this part, the goodbyes, the exchanges of email addresses, the wandering off into the night… but we made some amazing memories and have some incredible pictures. It was such a good trip, with the only complaints really being that it was too freaking cold in Beijing, they gave us too much food, and Air Canada delayed our flight home. In the grand scheme of things, that makes it pretty much a perfect trip. China was full of surprises, breaking all the preconcieved notions I had and just showing us an incredible time. I saw places that I never thought I’d see in person, biked an ancient city wall, seen snake on a stick, appeared in countless Chinese tourists’ photos… it was all good. If you ever considered visiting China, I strongly urge you to do it. You’ll love it!

Related posts:

1. China day 7: Can I barter for a bootleg copy of Mulan?
2. China day 6: Shanghaied!
3. China day 4: Face down in the dumplings
4. China day 5: Here come the Big Potatoes
5. China day 3:All in all we’re just another tourist on the Wall

Tags: Air Canada, Angry Birds, BlogSherpa, delayed, end, flight, home, KFC, packing, Shanghai, shopping