One Girl, Two Coasts: Day Twenty-Six: Vampire Hunters, Alice in Wonderland, & KTV

Day Twenty Six

Today might have been one of the best days of our trip! We slept in, had a great breakfast, chilled at home with our relatives during the morning, and then enjoyed a homemade dumpling lunch made by our aunt. Her dumpling-making skills are no joke. She wraps her dumplings so well and doesn't even taste-test her stuffing before she uses it. She simple smells it to gauge the taste. What?

After lunch, we left with Zabrina, who'd taken a day off from work for us, to bring us out again for another adventure! She had told us earlier about a new phenomenon in Shanghai that was basically known as "Room Break" or "Room Escapes".

They were interactive games in which you and a bunch of friends were trapped in a room or several rooms, and you had to try and use the clues/solve puzzles to unlock each lock to get into the next room. Each set of rooms has a different theme, whether it's scary, exotic, or fantastical, and there is a time limit for the entire experience. If you don't get out in time, you essentially lose.

Young people are absolutely in love with trying these "Room Breaks". A bunch of clubs have been established in the city to meet this new need, and we would be going to one of the best Room Break clubs today! I couldn't believe how cool this sounded. Why, oh why, didn't we have this in the States??

Our taxi dropped us off at a place called Three Quarks. I looked up "quark" when I got home and apparently, it's an elementary particle. Hmm...I thought the Chinese had misspelled something else or created another word. Did you know what a quark was? Am I just extremely unintelligent?

We stepped into their lobby, and I felt like I was in the real-life World of Warcraft. Bold red and blue banners hung from the ceilings, all of the furniture was wooden and medieval, and they had these huge, mystical figures standing near the walls, brandishing weapons. There were these fictional maps on the walls that showed weirdly named lands and large posters on the walls that were covered in little wooden slates, individually decorated by each group that had successfully gotten through the specific set of rooms. Whoa...I can't imagine the excitement that some people might get from stepping into this place. Such a perfect place to geek out!

The theme that my cousin chose to try was "Vampires". We were playing the game with four other people, because three people was too small of a group. After waiting for a bit, our other teammates showed up. My cousin described them perfectly: they were the Asian versions of the Big Bang Theory characters! Haha, they were pretty nerdy and seemed rather smart, and were fun to work with. Once we put away our bags in a storage locker, a crew member brought us into the first room and explained the instructions. Game time.

Essentially, we'd have 70 minutes to try and get through 7 rooms in total. Each group of players was watched in each room by cameras, and the group had two chances to "get help" from a crew member. You'd signal that you needed help by waving at the camera, and a crew member would pop in after a few seconds. Each room had a clock showing how much time you had left, but the other rooms that we went into were still stuck at zero, so we didn't have any sense of the time we had remaining. The group got 2 flashlights and 2 walkie-talkies, because we'd soon be splitting up to go through two doors, and then would converge back together to escape the final room.

We confirmed that we understood the directions, and he left us in the dark, spooky room that was filled with creepy, horror-movie music. We were now vampire hunters, and we had to figure out how to escape these rooms without being killed by vampires! So cool.

The first room that we were in was a dining area. A dining table was set up with candles, plates, and silverware on the table. There were dusty portraits on the wall of the family who lived here "before the vampires took over the house". A huge copy of "The Last Supper" was hung upside down on another wall, and there were also a few small stands, seats, and a locked cupboard.

Using the envelope on the table, we figured out that we had to unlock the cupboard by figuring out which of the family members were being mentioned in a riddle that was in the envelope. Each person had a number in one of the corners of the portrait. I let the Big Bang Theory boys figure that one out, since it involved a lot of reading and analyzing. Once they unlocked the cupboard, we found more clues inside these chests.

There was a copy of the Last Supper on a piece of paper and a black light flashlight. Once we shone the light on the paper, we found 3 triangles done by invisible ink, clumping the figures into 3 groups, and the number of people in each group ended up being the combo for the door! There were 2 passageways that we had to open; the one we'd just opened was a door, and the other was a tunnel in the fireplace. Each group had to take one route, and we could only split up once we had opened both.

That gives a pretty good idea of what you had to do with the clues and whatnot. There were so many locks...the Vampire rooms apparently were the hardest, and I could see why. It took us a while to move forward, especially since Jason and I can only read and write basic Chinese. I won't go into the teeny tiny details of what we did in each room, but we unlocked both routes and split up. I went with two of the BBT boys, and Zabrina and Jason went with the other 2. My group decided to be kind to them, and crawled through the dark tunnel inside the fireplace.

When we reached the next room, we found ourselves in a smaller room with a chest, patterned tapestry, and many decorations that completed the vibe (severed hands, rats, skulls. Super cheerful decor). Using the walkie talkies, we figured out that our combo was hidden in their room and theirs in ours. The tapestries were the key to unlocking our locks, and we each had to count the number of 2 key images that were pictured on each group's tapestry. Since it was really hard to communicate the images we were looking for and the other group kept giving us impossible numbers, we got a crew member to help us through that room.

The third room was even harder. There wasn't anything inside except for a huge locked armoir that you could climb through, a bunch of eerie candles, etc. We had to figure out the combo by matching up a set of letters to a set of numbers through a bunch of convoluted lines. This was especially hard because it seemed like the other group had our combo once again, and we would have to rely on them to get through our armoir.

We continued trying to work it out and didn't even realize that 70 minutes had gone by until a crew member announced it through a loudspeaker. Darn...we failed. It wasn't really fair though, since we hadn't been able to keep track of time. We could've used our second "get help" card a lot sooner if we'd known!

After crawling out of the tunnel and meeting the other group, we went back down into the lobby to rest and go over what had happened. The lobby had free soft drinks (Pepsi, Fanta, and 7 Up), and we drank up while we complained about our failure. Soon, we decided that we wanted to try another one (since the Vampire one was the hardest, by far), and we decided to go with the Alice in Wonderland themed one. There were a few other themes, like the Egyptian rooms and the Prison. They were in the process of making more rooms, which was why we continuously felt/heard construction while we were playing.

I thought the Alice in Wonderland one was cooler than the Vampire one. We started off in a room that had a huge chess board on the floor, with a locked Queen chest at one starting point, and two locked doors on the other side of the room. We had to unlock the Queen to figure out the combo for one of the doors; both had to be unlocked because there was an essential tool through the left door (and a very difficult shortcut beyond that) that needed to be used if you wanted to get through the right door, which was the normal pathway to get through.

After unlocking the Queen, we got through the right door and found an amazing pathway that had been filled with hundreds of colorful balls and leaves. You had to slowly make your way through the pool of balls (or if you were a nerdy, excited boy, you could kick the balls everywhere and cause a mess) and then get to the next room.

It went on like this, and we had one group go through each door to try and see which path we could take to save time. One of my 2 moments of pride was unlocking the door to the music room (the shortcut in the left door that would save us tons of time). There was a simple picture of 5 musical notes, and I hadn't really tried to figure it out since I was busy with another lock that apparently held the essential tool we needed.

However, I tried to solve it because there were so many people crowded around the other clue. It took me only one try (the lock used letters, not numbers, so I tried the piano letters that corresponded with each note, like A, B, C, D, E, F, and G). Once we were in (much to the surprise and delight of the BBT boys who'd tried many other tactics on that lock before) , we decided to just stick with this shortcut route. The music room was really hard, though. You had to unlock 2 locks; the first used a little musical player, which played a little bit of a song (I knew it was Fur Elise right away). You had to then find the song in the pile of sheet music in one corner, and then there would hopefully be some set of numbers to unlock the first lock.

My second triumph was when I found the correct sheet music (I'd played the song as a child) and gave the right combo for the lock to open! Yes. The next lock we had to unlock was even harder. It required you to find a certain bar of music by Fuga of a certain song in the pile of music. I thought I'd found the exact match, but none of the attempts we tried would work. Sadly, our time ran out again trying to figure it out, and a crew member came in to walk us out. We asked about the lock we were on, and he said that only one person had been able to figure it out, and that person was a music teacher. Whoa...we felt a lot better about ourselves now.

I hope that these Room Break games can be brought to America someday. They're so interesting, fun, and exciting; I definitely could have been more effective had it been in English, and I bet so many of my American friends would love playing these games. It's like being a real-life detective, or being in a video game! Such a great idea.

Once we drank a few more sodas, we decided to leave and walk around Huai Hai Road, a very well-known street with huge designer stores in the center of Shanghai. It was a quick subway ride over, and then Zabrina took us to these two shopping areas to just look around. They were in the very wealthy, affluent part of Shanghai that catered to many foreigners (there were restaurants with international cuisines, cafes, bars, and buildings with a lot of European influence).

We had dinner at K11, a ridiculously nice shopping mall with high-end stores, unique, modern restaurants, and a giant winged pig in the front of the building. The restaurant Zabrina chose was called Champè and it was a fusion of Asian and Chinese cuisines. We had Thai-style linguine, Sichuan noodles, mushrooms baked with cheese, Asian vegetables, roast duck, and spicy Asian fish. Dessert was also amazing, but I really don't know what it was (some type of cake with aloe in it and these wrapped pandan roll things with cheese? It didn't taste like cheese though).

It was a delicious meal (my relatives seemed to be treating us to the best food for our last few nights here) and once we were finished, we took a cab through the terrible traffic to get to another mall, where we'd be meeting our family. Jason and I had expressed our interest and love for KTV (essentially karaoke, but in a booked private room where you could order snacks, drinks, etc. and sing all kinds of songs regardless of their language or genre), since we didn't have it back in the States, and my relatives were happy to bring us to a KTV place before we left.

KTV is utterly huge in China, since people love to sing, pretend they're great singers, and go out with friends. You will see huge, glowing signs for KTV everywhere, in every city, and I am personally very upset that the US of A has not brought KTV to its people. It's a lot of fun, and it's really rather affordable to book a room for a few hours.

We suffered through bumper-to-bumper traffic but finally made it to the KTV place, which was one floor of another massive mall. Our relatives had already started singing, but let us order a bunch of songs off of the little electronic screen once we got there. Jason and I chose all of our favorite American music, while my other cousin chose a bunch of English songs that she liked as well.

I haven't been using an English name to address her because she's been deciding what her name should be during our time here. Her English name has been changed a few times now (it was Greyna at one point, then Rose, and most recently Alan) but she wants to have a new one because she isn't loving the current one. We've been helping her think of good names, but I think she decided around this time that her new name would be Claire (yay!), so I'll just call her that from now on.

Claire also loves karaoke, so the three of us basically hogged the microphones for the rest of the night because our relatives insisted that they preferred to hear us sing in English. We did all types of music: Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Eminem, Leona Lewis (at Claire's request), PSY, the Spice Girls, Jason Mraz, Lifehouse, etc.

So so so so much fun! I really wish we could've stayed longer (we had so many songs all queued up and ready to go), and Jason and I were nowhere near done, but our time was up so we headed back to the apartment. Tomorrow would be our last day in China, and Zabrina wouldn't be able to get out of work that day to say goodbye, so we hugged her and thanked her for all the fun we'd had these past weeks. The first of many goodbyes...I definitely tried to treasure these last few days with the family. Who knows when we'll see them again?

My aunt, the dumpling master

Such cute little guys!

And they look even better when they're ready to eat!

The following are the photos I took from the lobby of 3 Quarks

Free drinks and a 3 Quarks brochure, with a BBT boy strategizing in the background

I really wanted to find better pictures than the ones I took at 3 Quarks, so that I could give y'all a better idea of the actual club, so these next four were all found at: http://www.dianping.com/shop/8370128 You weren't allowed to bring phones into the game, which is why there are next to no photos of what the rooms look like. You'll just have to go check it out yourself!!