Shanghai @ MindSay

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Shanghai----Went to Shanghai for a week of orientation.  By far the largest city I have ever seen 22+ million people and a skyscraper on every corner.  Made NYC look like Buxton, or maybe Hollis.  Had both the very modern and the very old.  In one of the ancient Chinese-style gardens you were in the shadow of huge skyscrapers...."High Beauties" as Freddie, one of our university tour guides called them.  "Do you like the high beauties of Shanghai?" he would ask. 

The old part of the city that we travelled to was just as I had imagined this country to be like...crowded, narrow streets with shops and vendors everywhere.  One of the very first phrases that we were taught in our survival chinese course was "Bu yao" --I don't want it --or something to that effect.  It worked and some of the vendors would recoil in surprise to hear a westerner using it as they flaunted goods in your face.  Everywhere we went we were offered all manner of things...even looking into some of the small shops on the street would elicit a sales pitch and someone following you.  Who could have guessed that Rolex watches were so common in China --- poor vendors seemed to have dozens of them. 

In addition to "bu yao" we were also taught how to haggle on the prices....this was my personal favorite.  I enjoyed the drama of appearing disgusted at the price and his/her refusal to budge on it and walking away (sometimes several times in one transaction) in mock disgust.  You could usually cut the price from 50 -75% of what they initally offered. 

Did some other sightseeing, 2nd tallest building in the world -- went up some 88 stories in 45 seconds -- Shanghai museum (was one of the few places I remembered the camera), night boat cruise of the river, Yuyuan Garden (ancient Chinese style garden) and the old German concession known as The Bund.  This was basically a riverfront street and was made up of German style buildings...lots of bars and again, lots of vendors. 

Will travel back to Shanghai, whenever I get the need to feel western again.

I arrived in Hong Kong, pretty exhausted after a 21 hr or so journey (including layovers) and then spending the "night" (0:00 - 05:30) on a bench at the Hong Kong airport -- the budget and mid range hotels were all full-- and have yet to reunite with my luggage (which will be sent to the address i'll be staying at over the next couple nights in Macau, by China Eastern) since their flight from LA to Shanghai was late and i, and a girl from HK, returning from a summer internship to Disney World Orlando, FL, barely managed to catch the flight to HK, even after jogging the whole distance and being sped through the corridors and security by helpful China Eastern and Shanghai Security Staff -- so we did catch it but only just, with only a couple min to spare before the gate closed! --20 min after we landed on the LA-Shanghai flight which was about 2 hrs late-- it also arrived late in LA for unknown reasons). 

The image for your mind: after the security check point (didn't have to remove my boots but did remove the laptop from my backpack, the 3 security personel saying in Chinese "quick", "run quick" and one of them miming running motions, while another one helped me put on my heavy backpack i told them (in Chinese) that i understood-- due to fatigue i also kept saying "yes" in Japanese-- after effect of my month as an uchideshi Aikido student throughout last May and once said "thank you" in German for no reason other than fatigue) i was half jogging-running to the gate, came across some free baggage carts a few meters out of the way, grabbed one, put my plastic bag (of Denver postcards, T-shirt, Broncos cap and old down coat) in the cart and kept --running now that i had the extra stability of a cart to lean on-- as soon as i came to one of those moving walkways, stopped (while moving) and took off my super heavy backpack, threw it in the cart and went back to running a little faster now, until i got to the gate!

Therefore, however, there wasn't enough time for the luggage to be transfered so they'll bring it to my address at a Friend's place in Macau which is where i'm heading off to right now!  (Via high speed catamaran water-jet Ferry)

Imagine for a second you're in Shanghai.
You're up in a 40 story apartment building looking out through the window pane. What do you see?

Do you notice the families of superhighways that pummel their way through the city like a river, teaming with determined and regimented oily fish?
Do you notice the heavyset brutalist concrete slabs that still jut out everywhere, making up lifestyles for maybe hundreds and thousands and millions of those linked swimming fish, despite the unspeakable failures of the collectivist utopian principles associated with the architecture style and your heartland itself?
Do you see hanging laundry? Does it make up a colourful tapestry -- like the series of monochromatic boxes and buildings down there below?
Do you strain to catch a glimpse of the green patch way out there, that little postage stamp which served as your high school football field, even though you never played, wondering who runs out there now?

 

Do you wonder if there really are gangsters in the walled streets of Pudong, more down there by the sea, working the streets, for a brief moment caught in a pause, looking up at apartments aimlessly, just dreaming, about whatever?
Do you try to guess how much more of the sky will be taken up by those blobs and squares and art pieces, that shoot up like weeds, and in less than a month?
Are you escaping from bills, or incompetence, or that thing you're ashamed of, not looking at anything, but just letting your eyes glaze over?
Are you thinking about the networks -- phone lines, satellite receivers, optic fibers and radio waves -- that keep gamers together, gathered in market shops, to converse and battle with icons?

Maybe you're letting your mind run wild, trying to get on that new train -- to turn the tides of the market so you can make your own gains.
Maybe you're calm on the outside but terrified on the inside, thinking of all those other who have been captured, knowing you could be next (you've done enough already -- they wouldn't have trouble coming up with a reason).
Maybe all you want is out, and you just can't see a way, despite all your best efforts and all that humiliation.

Or maybe you feel completely at ease, finally tranquil, looking out over all this knowing you're a part; you have a stake here, cleaning all these stream fish of the dirt and the burdens, glad to contribute to the society, to what's best for this family...

I don't know, though. I'm only imagining.