Sojourn in Shanghai (II)

24th November 2005

I woke up slightly after seven, satisfactorily rested and ready to call my contact in Shanghai, Mr. Wee.

However, I decided to start my day off by singing some karaoke and turned my laptop on, powered by the socket initially supplying the table lamp.

After taking stock of my belongings, I decided to shower and take a drink a few cups of water and green tea, the water coming from an impressively new-looking water dispenser on an equally impressive wooden cupboard. The hotel information told me that rooms cost from 365 yuan so I might as well make full use of the facilities, I thought.

At slightly before 1030(after spending many rubbery minutes singing laptop karaoke and appreciating the many channels on Chinese TV), I called up the number I had gotten from Mr. Wee’s wife before my arrival.

On the other end of the line was a groggy voice that patently belonged to someone who had stayed awake through the wee hours of the previous night, and arranged to meet him just before the checkout time at 12pm.

To cut a long story short, I decided to stay another day at Liang liang after finding out that the room rate was actually only 170 yuan (S$36.55) a night! A better bargain for accomodation I’ve not found before or since.

The weather outside was chilly but appealed to my heat-sensitive, rash-inflicted skin.

After re-checking in, I emerged in the foyer just in time to bump into a very Malaysian-looking, rotund Mr. Wee, who struck me instantly as a personable, though outspoken character.

‘Ah, things are looking up,’ I thought, smiling inwardly even as I beamed outwardly while offering my handshake to him.

While having a typical Chinese style lunch(sans rice, which was how Shanghainese ate), I discussed various topics close to and more remote from my heart with Wee. He revealed to me that he was a longtime friend of my Uncle Ron, who had recently retired as MD of Hong Leong Industries. Also, he also let on that he was now in an alliance with The Lion group of Malaysia, selling shoes with their manufacturing base in China, to Malaysians.

Apparently he had lost big on his first business(which I felt it improper to probe through questioning) , to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars(ringgit I presumed). I tried amiability by mentioning that my rich aunt in Penang had also lost a fortune trying to run a franchise in Malaysia that competed with the inimitable Body Shop.

However, I sensed that although my aunt had wads of money left to fall back on
after failing in that business, Mr. Wee didn’t.

After paying him for the previous night’s stay and for the tickets I requested that he help me buy, we headed out to his ‘office’ in town, where he had a lively clash of ideas with his China associates over the design for a rubber sole as well as the faulty colouration of some shoes. He had seemingly already anticipated this by telling me to ‘watch how I handle these people’ before we had arrived.

But he had the charm to turn the disagreement into as nearly a friendly verbal jostling as it could be. He was both insistent and accommodating to limitations mentioned by an elderly shoemaker as well as a late middle-aged lady with a kindly face.

I tried their office coffee, which tasted better than MacDonald’s industrial brown liquid back in Singapore. He also introduced a young smiling Mr. Lin, who was the ‘boss’s’ son, and had matching waistline. When we left the office, he told me to contact Lin in case I had any problems so I duly stored his handphone number in my otherwise useless handphone.

After being dropped off at a famous shopping street, Nanjing Road, I walked towards the riverfront armed with my Lonely Planet guide to the city.

I managed to find a Chinese restaurant listed there(Xinya), had some late afternoon dianxin, saturated with oil, and walked on, snapping photos along the way. After passing a café mentioned for cheap eats(Donghua), I tried locating another café along the main thoroughfare parallel to the famous Bund walk by the Huangpu river.

Partly because the sky had already darkened considerably at 6pm, I was unsuccessful and headed straight down the road in the direction I vaguely knew my hotel was located.

The temperature headed steadily lower as I crossed a road under a bridge and then used a flyover pass. After browsing at a bookstore, I stopped over at a branch of Manabe café to have dinner.

Back at the hotel, I was relieving myself and preparing to soak in the bath when there was a knock at door. Totally naked, I clambered to the door to spy Mr .Wee in the peephole and agreed to come over to the neighbouring room(513) after I was done bathing.

I was introduced to two Indonesian businessmen, an obese, balding Mr Cao, his two rather gangsterish-looking mainland ‘henchmen’, and a pretty young girl I assumed to be Mr. Cao’s mistress.


Fast forward two hours, and the more boyish-looking Indonesian guy had whisked me off to the landmark(and very 30ish )Paramount hotel, made our way up to the second floor via a spiral staircase, only to leave two minutes later after an elegant young lady told us amicably that the entrance was 200 yuan and a girl to accompany us would cost another two thousand.

\After a couple of phonecalls, we headed instead to a discotheque incompetently named Babyface and returned after a beer each and jiving self-consciously and inconsequentially to loud,beat-heavy, meaningless noise.

I was approached by a semi-attractive girl whose head only reached up to my chest but I declined firmly with a smile.

We headed back to the hotel at slightly after midnight, with my companion’s return flight only eight short hours later.