Getting Shanghai'd

Here is the account of my journey to mainland China transcribed from my handwritten journal in a silver notebook. On the whole, the words are those that I recorded on the specific day of my journey, modified slightly for style and content when necessarily. In addition, one major textual change takes place in this transcription: when I take notes, I tend to use Japanese and Chinese as a kind of shorthand. However, for the benefit of those of you who cannot either read those languages, or do not have the correct encoding installed on your computer to actually visualize them correctly, I am translating these into English.

July 21 2009, 12:00 AM

Perhaps the best way to describe my first impression of Shanghai was of being hit by a wall of “oh my God, it’s HOT!!!” When I alighted (fancy British word for disembarked, used all the time in Hong Kong) the plane, it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and also 8:30 PM. In addition, it was nearly at 100% humidity. The heat would continue for another day, before the rain started, and never seemed to let up…

Travel to Shanghai was mostly uneventful, in the way traveling to get to a destination is meant to be. Mostly is the key word, however. At the very beginning of my trip, I boarded the wrong bus and arrived at the wrong MTR station. It wasn’t an insurmountable problem, I just had to travel for an extra half hour to get to the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border, and in one piece. Entering the Mainland was no trouble at all, although it was a tad inconvenient with impatient glares in my direction. I particularly enjoyed the friendly, welcoming barbed wire on the Hong Kong side of the moat.

Once in china, the barrage of salespeople began and never ceased…I learned immediately that not only do I not want to buy most of what they offered. I also learned that most of the “helpful” people who get very excited and begin guiding me somewhere other than where I’m going aren’t actually helpful, and just want me to use their overpriced and unnecessary service. There are many helpful people, let me get that straight, I was pointed in the correct direction many times. The helpful ones just didn’t get excited.

Xiao Xiao’s friend Sun Chengjie picked me up at the Shanghai Pudong Airport (with a sign and everything) (p.s. the airport is massive, it took 10 minutes to walk down the terminal using walkways), and showed me a bit of the city. Shanghai is gorgeous, but surprisingly dark compared to Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, etc. Much of the darkness is due to the massive renovations occurring in the city in preparations for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, where the Chinese government is doing much the same as it did to Beijing.

With a single night in Shanghai, I feel I’ve had enough city, and I want to go somewhere more peaceful and calmer. Tonight, everybody wanted to sell me things, including lasers illegal in the US, various toys, “Chinese Massages” and other less innocent offers. I was even assaulted by a “weak” old begger, who leaned on his cane, pointed to his mouth to show how hungry he was, and then gripped my shoulder sharply…

From now on, I’ll tell people who ask to sell me things by using English “watashi dost nicht loqualis Inglais.” Maybe that will confuse even the trilingual street hawkers. Not that many of those trilingual guys will be selling stuff on the street, but I also don’t want to be caught in a bluff about my language.

Early to rise tomorrow, and then I’m off to Hangzhou.