The City

I should start by describing where I am. Shanghai is thirteen time zones east of Eastern Time and twelve hours ahead on a daylight savings clock. Beijing is about three hours north by plane or perhaps five hours by train. The name Shanghai itself simply means 'on the sea' and it covers an enormous chin of land south of where the Yangtze meets the ocean. The city is divided into east and west banks by the winding Huangpu River which I crossed on my way back from the airport.



From the cab there wasn't much to see but the road. I spent the trip chatting with my new officemate Zhu and when I glanced out the window I saw only the tops of modest apartment and office buildings over the concrete barrier. On the highway side of the barrier were flower bushes and gardeners. I suppose I'd expected the city to be a mix of New York's Chinatown and the Los Angeles from Blade Runner but Shanghai is the greenest city I've ever visited. There are shade trees every ten feet in pedestrian areas. Flower bushes and hedges are maintained on every meridian and under every ramp and the overpass railings themselves are lined with troughs of plants.

I was also impressed by the paucity of autos. The only time so far I've encountered a bumper to bumper traffic jam was on a bridge during the initial taxi ride. In the oncoming lanes a non-fatal impact had stopped cars for the better portion of a mile, but so far I can't imagine stopping twice at the same red light in this city at any time of day. As Zhu informed me people were simply priced out of buying cars and even then getting a license was almost half the price of the car itself. Even the rare parking lot we drove past was mostly empty, at least of cars. Bikes are the way to travel here; with no hills gears are unnecessary and the same is almost true for brakes as I later discovered. Old folks, business people and students all get around on two wheelers. Cyclists carry passengers who ride sidesaddle on their book stands and mothers carry toddlers in the front baskets. This morning I saw a man peddling, his wife sitting behind him and their child in her lap. This was actually on my way to get my own bicycle-- the one I had borrowed, like Zhu's, didn't have functioning brakes so I was willing to pay full price for a brand new one.

I buy things here like houses on Pennsylvania Avenue. At the cafeteria I can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner for $2.50 per day. So I guess it would be more like Oriental Avenue. Most things there are a la carte so I point to something and say "Zhe ge" and someone on the other side of the counter puts it on a tray. The dishes are grouped under price tags of 2, 3 or 4 kuai and every meal I've had something different. Fried yam cakes and egg drop soup is my favorite breakfast so far and the pork and chicken stews are tasty with marinade though I can't vouch for the quality of the meat itself. The one truly bizarre thing I've had so far is duck's tongue. I was given a plate of these things shaped like large wishbones with ends curled into talons. At the joint of the bone was a chewy muscle that I scraped off with my incisors and I can't say that it wasn't magically delicious.

Having spent nearly twelve hours traveling from the north part of the West Bank to the southern reaches of the city I have seen exactly one beggar, a silent downtrodden woman who could've been in her eighties. Everyone who sits on the sidewalk is peeling vegetables, welding bedframes, assembling bicycles. Even in neighborhoods where the windows are broken in row after row of concrete tenements there is no graffiti and people leave their homes in the morning dressed for work.



The air pollution is the worst I've ever experienced and oddly it hasn't affected me much. The sea breeze is constantly refreshing but then again it hasn't had a chance to get truly hot in the city. The sky is seldom cloudy and yet it's never clear. Everything disappears after five hundred yards and the buildings in view never lend much character, featureless paper cutouts in a shoebox diorama. I hear the effects of the pollution every morning as well. The birds start squawking when the sun rises at around a quarter to five and a half hour later I can hear the traffic. Then the bicyclists come out and the hacking starts as everyone joins in a ride-by phlegming.

Things that I miss so far... there aren't any street musicians and I have yet to see a pub though plenty of restaurants serve alcohol until two in the morning. I told Zhu about the concept of bars, these places where people go to get drunk. "You can get drunk anywhere," he replied, somewhat befuddled. Most of all I miss coffee. When I ask for it on campus and in the surrounding shops they give me this sugary gunk that's half milk with the other half being something not coffee. I found some instant Nescafe in the supermarket and it's the most expensive food item I've bought by far.



The most annoying thing I've encountered though is the craps game of an internet they have here. WaPo and Slate don't work, I've had BBC load once so I get all my western news from LA Times and Foxnews. Fark works but Slashdot doesn't; LiveJournal will 404, as will any search result for Tibet, Dali Lama and Freenet. Gmail runs fine but Yahoo is very slow. Clearly they need to assist in the arrest of more bloggers to increase their bandwidth. Assuming this gets posted uncensored I'll update a couple times a week.

All in all, I'm digging it.