The 10 day trip is enough for me to feel the heartbeat of Shanghai. During my stay there, I took public transport such as bus, MRT and taxi. Squeeze with the morning crowd and ate at local restaurants. Shanghai is a big city, fast-paced and filled with modern skyscrapers but... the people are a bit rough and rude at times. There were numerous times that I heard loud gasping noise and the next moment, a lump of phlegm flew out from the person's mouth and landed on the floor. The sight was unbearable. Now, every time I heard similar sound, my reflex was to see where the source of the sound come from and dodge the person in case the greenish or whitish stuff land on me. Yucks!
Another not so nice thing is the pushing. The people there are not very used to saying "excuse me", even if they do, they say and push you at the same time, before you can react to give way. This is something I'm not so used too. However, as the days passed by, I was kind immune to the pushing.
Hailing for cab is another harrowing experience. The people have no concept of queueing for cab. It's the survival of the fittest. When the cab is near, you just have to race with the crowd to jump into the cab in order to claim the cab. It's first snatch first serve basis. I guess, China is so big, so everyone needs to compete and fight for himself.
There are nice people too. When I was in Zhouzhuang, a guy offered to walk around with me because both of us are individual travellers but I turned him down. I was wary as I was alone and not very keen to make new friends. However, I met him again at a restaurant and decided to have lunch with him as I thought we were fated to meet. The place is so big, yet I chose a restaurant and at that timing to have met him. He's surgeon who came to Shanghai to work for half a year and we had a good chat. In the end, he gave me a treat. Wow! After that, we went on separate paths to tour around the place.
Shanghai is a shopping paradise. Things are trendy and affordable. I told myself I'm not going to buy much but in the end I spent money like water. I felt guilty to be spending like this during the financial crunch but thought I really deserve this little reward since I worked so hard for the year. Finding excuses to make myself feel better. ;-)
China is indeed a powerful country to watch out. Just their cheap goods alone can flood every market and kill the competition. Though the quality of the goods are not top notch but I believe just another 10 or 15 years, China will catch up.
There was one day I spend close to 4 hours in the Shanghai book store and bought about 10 books. Books in China are really cheap so I grabbed a few. Luckily my luggage was not overweight and I managed to bring them back. Phew!
I met up with a former student in Shanghai. He was on a work and study attachment programme. My goodness! It's really nice of him to arrange to meet me and we had a great time chatting. He brought along another student of mine without me knowing. What a surprise! I feel old already after meeting them. Ha!
Actually I badly wanted to go to Putuo Island (普陀山）but the day I planned to go, the temperature dropped to -2 Degree Celsius. Everyone advised us not to go. I guess I'll need to plan another trip to SH perhaps next year?
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