Shanghai - Early Impressions

I've been here for about 36 hours now, not nearly enough fr a city that you could probably spend your life in and not know many of its corners and spaces. A few early thoughts:

- this place is absolutely huge, yet surprisingly easy to get around in. A few minutes down one of the freeways takes you to a new part of the city with a whole new crop of skyscrapers. Traffic here can be murder at certain parts of the day, but also fast and efficient at others. Each neighbourhood has its own personality.

- the new and the old are here, pushed up against each other. Yesterday Jeff Utecht was a great host and showed us his old neighbourhood and some of the spaces to see. We went from old winding lanes filled with tiny spaces to live, where the sinks were outside and public toilets on the corners, to gleaming seven story shopping malls filled with products of every imaginable shape and size.

- the people here are incredibly friendly and happy to help if they can. For a city of twenty four million people, I feel more safe here than I have in many much smaller cities in North America. We came upon several groups of older men last night gathered around tables watching others playing checkers while everyone watched; the streets alive with people after dark when the humidity falls.

- a few phrases of Chinese goes a long ways. 

 - the motto here must be: "if you are going to build something, make it the biggest, the best, the brightest, the largest, the newest it can be. Stepping off the plane in the airport, I walked across spaces so new I could still smell the glue from the carpets.

- coming in to communist China, the customs officers were friendly, helpful and efficient. When was the last time you could say that in North America?

- While I understand that Shanghai may not be representative of all of China, this is a forward looking place. This is not China, the coming world power, this is a China whose time is already here.

If you can wrap your head around these two pictures being about fifteen minutes apart be cab: you can begin to understand this city a tiny bit.

Tags: learning2.008, shanghai, china

Comments

[Jan Smith]

Thanks for your insights, and good luck on your visit, Clarence.
I have never been to Shanghai, But the comparison you draw reminds me a bit of visiting Cape Town: different worlds, minutes apart. I love the second image. Do know what the series of numbers means (behind her legs)?

[Mike DeNeef]

Jan, the numbers aren't that exciting. Mundane advertisements for something; those are the phone numbers.

Glass Beed welcome to Shanghai. Go Riders.