I'm in my hotel room on my last morning in Shanghai, after a few days here for work. Before I arrived, several of my colleagues who'd been here before gave me advice and warnings from their own time in China. It was all over the spectrum, including one guy who loves Shanghai so much that he's trying to move here, and one at the opposite end who said I'd definitely get sick from the food and probably also get scammed. Most of the stories were somewhere in between, though, from lost luggage and no Chinese clothes fitting, to being afraid to wear sandals in the dirty streets, to getting fat from all the great meals. Seems everyone has a different time here, including me.
Unfortunately, for the next 3 days it rained and rained... evidently this is the rainy season. Add that to this being a very busy work trip, and my sightseeing wasn't so much delayed as cancelled. With long days of work and crosstown commutes between flying in and out of town, my view of Shanghai has mostly been from the windows of the office, the hotel, and taxis. But I did see a fair bit that way.
The day before I came here, I finished the book How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic. In one of her essays she talks about laundry, how in every Eastern European country she'd visited in the Communist days and shortly after, people still washed things by hand and hung them out to dry. But in all these places, when people moved into the flats in tall buildings of cities, they had no balconies for hanging the clothes. So the solution was to mount bars outside the windows and have their clothes dangling many stories above the sidewalk, dripping on the heads of passers by. As we zig-zagged through Shanghai in various taxis, I saw the same here, in so many buildings, all across town. A true Communist universal!
Speaking of the taxis... the traffic here is crazy, and every cab ride ranged from a bit jerky to mildly terrifying. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, mopeds, bikes, and pedestrians are everywhere in the streets, going every which way, all of the time. The traffic lights and standards of driving seem to be general guidelines, more than hard and fast rules. But I was here working with a guy from India who said compared to his hometown, the Shanghai roads are well organised. I guess that means if I ever take a taxi in India, I should spend my time covering my eyes and praying to Elvis.
Anyway. So mostly I've spent my time here working, or being tired and going to bed early before another work day. But the local team here was very hospitable, and fed me well on Chinese food. The first day we went to a Shanghainese restaurant for a big family style lunch, and they asked if I was okay with chopsticks. When I said could manage, but wished I was better at using them, the team all cheered me on for managing to eat 99% of my food without dropping anything, and said I was a chopstick master. So they were clearly liars, but very nice people. They also took me out last night, to feed me coffee, pizza, and cocktails after a tour of the big Starbucks Roastery.
My biggest worry was that my generally cranky respiratory system would act up here, but until this morning it's been okay. My sinuses have been slightly problematic, but that's just typical travel allergies. I can't say I'm sad to be leaving before the air gets to me, but I do wish I'd seen more while I was here. Maybe another time...
