Friday started with a brunch at the Japanese restaurant round the corner.
I then moved on to the Shanghai Museum while Lloyd went to get train tickets for the following day, neatly allowing me to avoid the inferno that is the station ticket office. And what a cool museum.
It attempted to cover the period from when Chinese civilization started, with sections on sculpture, painting, calligraphy, seals (the type related to sending lettters), money, furniture and doubtlessly other things that escape me. It probably shouldn't have been a surprise that the china and pottery was the most distinctive and impressive section, along with the sculpture. The money section was also interesting. Way back in time some Chinese used pieces of metal that were designed to easily attach to a belt, rather than the (more) modern round coins. They looked more like keys. A few Victorian coins from Hong Kong were memorable too, probably down to my inexplicable and no-doubt immoral interest in the British Empire.
We chilled out for much of the afternoon, before we went to do some shooting. We'd scouted out the place a few nights before and were impressed enough by its obviously slack attitude that we decided to go for it. When we got there, there were people laying on the sofas and others watching a very adult-sounding film in the corner.
We were soon in the booths of the firing range itself, built to international safety standards which were then immediately ignored. They had switched the metal detectors off before we went in, and let me describe the instruction given before we started shooting: none. I had shot before so it wasn't a big deal for me, but it was fairly amazing.
The smaller guns we were using were eight pounds for ten shots, at which point the guy in the booth would reload for you. By the entrance there was a warning to keep count of how much you were spending, but Marisa's friend Celine didn't heed this advice and accidentally blew forty quid in about four minutes.
The guns were not that powerful, which was disappointing. For a second round, some of us went for guns with sniper-rifle like sights you could look down. This made everything a lot easier, and therefore almost no fun. Overall it was a good thing to do though.
We went back to the apartment, ordered McDonalds for delivery (available 24 hours) and watched Kick Ass in preparation for going out to some clubs. Everyone promptly wimped out of this, so Lloyd and I went to a Belgian bar alone. When we got there, the next table was occupied by a few locals who were in a bit of a state. We ordered beers from their excellent menu and were soon chatting to them.
It turned out they were English teachers and their ("star") student. The teachers spoke reasonable English, and we were soon discussing politics. They didn't have much of interest to say, which was disappointing as I was hoping for some insight into the Chinese people's view of their country's regime. I'll keep looking.
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