Testing the Black Market in Shanghai

Tomorrow morning we take a train to Shanghai, where we will be spending the weekend. The main occasion is a district conference for the Shanghai China International District, but we are excited to spend the day Saturday exploring museums and gardens.

In the spirit of the occasion, though, I thought I'd recap our first experience in Shanghai. Our plane flew into Shanghai on the night of August 22nd at 8:15pm, about two hours behind schedule. Although it was going to make for a little longer night, we weren't too worried. By chance we were on the same plane as Sharla, another flagship student, and we were confident that our Chinese ability could get us from Shanghai to Nanjing. We passed through customs without any setbacks, and the bus leaving for the train station was easy enough to find. We had already exchanged our money in LA, so we were equipped with well enough RMB to make the trip. Unfortunately, though, the normal bus route was apparently partially closed off for an unknown reason, and our bus driver made a few wrong turns. This delayed us arriving at Shanghai train station until close to 11:00pm. And that's where things started getting interesting.

As soon as we got off the bus and were quickly trying to get our luggage from the compartment below, we were surrounded by taxi drivers and "bus scouts." The taxi drivers quickly left, I imagine after seeing all of our luggage, but the bus scouts were determined to have us take their bus. We confidently told them that we were taking the train, only to hear their tale that the last train for Nanjing had already left and the first one in the morning wasn't until 5am. Still confident that I had read the train schedule right, and not quite wanting to trust these men, we decided that Kiersten and I would stay with the luggage (it was a lot to carry) and Sharla would go into the train station to check the schedule. They were right. The last train had left at 11:00. We still didn't trust our pursuers, however, and we tried to locate a bus schedule to find out when a real bus would come. After all, a real bus probably doesn't have bus scouts trying to get people on it. Again to our dismay, we discovered that the last bus for Nanjing had already left. There were two decisions: find a hotel for the night or trust our fate with these men. We went with the latter.

The men had promised us that they had a bus leaving at midnight, and it would only take three hours to get to Nanjing. This sounded doable. Their price was high, but not outrageous, and Sharla's bargaining skills helped drop it down to reasonable. However, after walking twenty minutes to where the bus was waiting, we discovered that we were the first ones on the bus. We didn't like this, but we seemed to have few other choices. However, we realized that this bus would not be going to Nanjing if we were the only ones on it, and it would especially not be leaving at 12 sharp if we were the only ones on it. So, two hours and many more confused and scared faces later, we left for Nanjing at 1:15am. I tried to sleep, but sleep just wouldn't come, and I stared out the window. I was sure we'd get to Nanjing, but this was not making for a good first impression of China. The promised three hours turned into five hours before we finally arrived at Nanjing train station. Being the last ones off the bus, and hoping for some sympathy from someone, we asked our driver if he could take us to our hotel. For an additional 100RMB, he obliged, and we happily took our bags and checked into our hotel at 6:45am, Sunday morning.

That's the condensed version of that night. Both Kiersten and I will both agree that we do not want to experience that again. China has been good to us since then, and we are very happy here. We are definitely hoping for a better impression of Shanghai this time around, and we are confident that we will be able to navigate our way better.