Shanghai Overview

I visited China for three weeks, from May 31, 2009, through June 21, 2009. Aside from two short overnight trips, I spent my time entirely in Shanghai.

Even if I disregarded the language issues, I don't think I would like Shanghai. It's hard for me to say, though, because language was such a large issue. I guess I didn't really understand how much I depended on my rudimentary Spanish in Barcelona until I had to get along without knowing how to say, "Where is the bus stop for the bus that goes to the airport," "Can I borrow your phone to make a local call," and "I'm just browsing; I don't need any help." I could manage in restaurants pretty well because most restaurants in Shanghai, even if they don't have an English menu, have many pictures. I know these example problems don't sound bad, but it makes a city less interesting if you're walking around and can't read anything. Furthermore, it's immensely frustrating not be able to say something simple. I got good at pantomiming (while smiling to make the other person more forgiving that I couldn't speak his language).

My main complaint about Shanghai is that it's under construction. It feels like the majority of the city is being torn down, renovated, or rebuilt. A sizable portion of this construction is because Shanghai's the site of the 2010 expo (a.k.a. world's fair). A part of it, Shanghai's riverside promenade known as The Bund, is entirely closed as new buildings are erected: fancy, distinctive buildings, often designed by and sponsored by particular countries. Tourist sites are being renovated. Subway lines are being furiously expanded. The cute gumby expo 2010 logo is reflected in posters and statues throughout the city. I imagine the 2010 expo is doing for Shanghai what the 2008 Olympics did for Beijing.

(Perhaps the city selected the 2010 expo motto "Better City, Better Life" because it realized the people's irritation with construction and its associated negative effects. I read the motto as an appeal to put up with the city until the expo because life will be better after it.)

Naturally, with all this development, some expo-related, some not (a friend told me Shanghai's been developing a ton over the last several years -- it's not all last-minute expo stuff), comes construction noise (car horns, traffic, drills, sledgehammers) and construction dust, a.k.a. haze. These bothered me more than the construction itself. Despite the temperature, I wore pants to help keep clean. Some women wore pollution masks. I didn't notice any explicit negative health effects on myself other than my nose being stuffed more than usual, but the haze had a substantial psychological impact. I'd look out the window and simply not be very excited to go out to walk around and explore the city. Maybe part of this was because the apartment I stayed in faced south, meaning it got warm--outside temperatures were usually in the 80s--and necessitated air conditioning, also making me less inclined to go outside. Usually, however, when I did venture out, it wasn't as bad as I imagined from within the confines of the apartment. I guess that's a positive.

One other thing that bothered me is that I never found a place to relax outside of my apartment. In nearly every city I've visited, I could either find a pleasant park where I'd like to sit and read, or, when I must be indoors, a comfortable library or bookstore. Here, I didn't want to sit outside, and I never found an indoor place with comfortable seating where I felt comfortable. I guess in a place as crowded as Shanghai, anyplace offering indoor seating is likely to be overrun.

Honestly, I think if the temperature were cooler during this visit, I might've liked the city more. How much more is hard to say. (Note: when visiting Singapore, I looked past its weather, which was certainly worse than Shanghai's during this visit, and liked that city a lot anyway.)

Thus, the city lacked one feature that's important to me: the ability to / desire to walk around. I lacked the motivation because of the haze, because I couldn't read the signs (so things were less interesting), and because I disliked the constant honking of cars.

Transportation
Shifting gears a bit, I'm happy to report the city has a reasonable transportation system. The train system is fast and relatively easy to use (even for someone with no knowledge of Chinese), though it doesn't stay open late. (It begins to shut down after 10pm.) I enjoyed that the trains have mobile phone coverage everywhere, including tunnels.

Navigating the city on foot isn't bad either. Virtually every street sign has Romanized characters (i.e., English letters), making signs easy to read for us non-Chinese. Plus, I like that every street sign tells which way is north. One needs to be a little careful at intersections, as Chinese drivers take right turns on red at high speed, but all big intersections have a traffic cop or two or help control the flow and tell pedestrians when to cross. In addition, enormous intersections usually have overpasses.

The bus system is not for foreigners: no signs are Romanized (i.e., destinations are listed only in Chinese characters), no stations have route maps, and the drivers don't speak English. The bus system is effectively incomprehensible.

I didn't ride in a car much in Shanghai, so I can't say much about traffic except that it sometimes looks bad. I did ride occasionally in taxis. Taxis are surprisingly cheap. Often, if you have four people, it's cheaper to take a taxi than public transit (regardless of the distance you want to go), a fact not true in the states. Taxi drivers, however, can be a mixed bag. Some don't know the city very well, to the extent that they can't even get you to a particular metro station. Also, most don't speak a word of English.

Street Scene
All that said, something about the feel of Shanghai's street scene (especially that found in lower-class neighborhoods) appeals to me, whether it's people doing tai chi (freezing in strange poses, or rocking their heads, or walking backwards, etc.), guys walking around in their pajamas because they live right across the street and needed to pick up something at the market, or people hanging out by the vegetable carts on the street in the morning.

By the way, I visited many neighborhoods in the city and not one made me feel unsafe.

Tourist Sights
Shanghai doesn't seem have to many great / can't-miss tourist sights. Of the places I visited, I'd have to say I liked Yuyuan Garden the most. I also must compliment the Shanghai Museum, which managed to pique my interest in ancient Chinese artifacts. Despite seeing these items presented in many other museums, I'd never found myself interested in them. Thus, I was surprised that I found I like the museum and how it described its pieces.

By the way, given that I stayed in Shanghai for three weeks, I visited sights in a haphazard order. I certainly didn't go from best / most promising to least promising. i.e., don't judge things by what I happened to see first.

Architecture
Much of Shanghai's architecture is unremarkable. The new, modern skyscrapers by People's Square and in Pudong are cool. The colonial-era buildings on The Bund are neat too, but the rest of the city was unexciting, with the notable exception of one common design feature: longtang (long4 tang2) / lilong (li3 long4). Longtang/lilong are long alleys packed with townhouses and short apartment buildings, often with branches into small courtyards surrounded by even more residential buildings. They usually branch off of commercial streets. Many people live in this form of back alley housing. The alleys are easy to miss but they form the gateway to a community and thus are one way Shanghai manages to pack so many people in. Although they're mostly gone from the center of downtown, they're common throughout the rest of the city, especially the older neighborhoods. I think it's a cute, intelligent design, a nice way of combining residential and retail.

Food
I was generally pleased with Shanghainese food. What I want to mention about food is the habits the Shanghainese have. One, many people drink few liquids (perhaps because the tap water isn't safe to drink), and seemingly instead get their liquids by ordering a clear, light soup as part of their meal. Two, there's no notion of a sweet dessert; restaurants almost universally provide watermelon slices at the end of a meal. Three, when in need of something sweet, it's possible to find bready things with sweetened red bean paste or cakes made from sweetened glutinous rice flour almost anywhere. (Note: when I returned to Shanghai in late fall/winter, I had trouble finding steamed sweetened rice cakes. Bready things with bean paste were still easy to locate.) Four, I rarely saw an overweight Chinese person, and I can't recall ever seeing anyone actually obese. I'm not going to attempt to figure out the cause (culture, diet, smoking, genetics, etc.).

One more interesting feature of the food is that chicken tastes different here: it's better, more chicken-y. It might be the size, it might be what they're fed, but, regardless, you can taste the difference in dishes such as steamed chicken and certainly in the chicken soup.

As for Western food, there are some restaurants around, though I'm told they're not particularly good. (I didn't try any.) There certainly are international chains such as McDonalds, Starbucks, and Burger King; the one I saw most frequently was KFC, which even delivers (by bicycle).

The biggest food-related issue I had didn't involve food but rather smoking. Smoking is commonplace, and there's no special section in restaurants for smokers. Every time we ate out, we scouted the restaurant for smokers and ventilation systems and then decided where to sit.

Being White
I can't complete this entry without mentioning how an obviously foreign person is treated. Generally, people looked at me as a curiosity, but rarely did people care about me / feel the need to interact with me. Once or twice a week someone would ask if they could have their picture taken with me. Also, unlike how I often felt in India, people didn't look at me as a meal ticket. Sure, in some particular areas (the pedestrianized part of E. Nanjing Road, and W. Nanjing Road near the Jing'an Temple, and Huaihai Road west of Shaanxi Road) I was repeated offered watches or DVDs, but it wasn't a general (i.e., city-wide) irritation.

Near Renmin/People's Square and The Bund, I'd run into friendly Chinese people, possibly locals, possibly domestic tourists (usually a local showing two visiting friends around), possibly scammers. I've been asked to take people's pictures. Regardless, they'd always want to chat (they'd always speak English), and I'd always get invited along to wherever they were going, or they'd try to get invited along to where I was going. Sometimes these invitations were to a international tea culture festival or some such thing. As my research said nothing of the sort was happening, I think these were part of the infamous tea ceremony scam. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe all the friendly people I ran into were trying to run a scam.

I was amused that two people in one group I met seemed to be infatuated with America. One knew most U.S. cities by what movies they were featured in. Another knew the tallest peak in California (and, I imagine other states) and what California's state flower is. (I don't know it.)

Wealth Disparities
I feel this entry wouldn't be complete with talking about money. Things in Shanghai cost roughly a quarter of things in the bay area, but this isn't universally true: it's easy to find shops and neighborhoods that charge prices more typical for the bay area.

Regardless, unlike in India, I rarely saw someone truly impoverished. Even the local street-side tailor seemed to be getting by. Virtually everyone seemed to walk and hold themselves as if they were employed and, if not comfortable, then at least not worried about their next meal. (Obviously, my assessment may depend on the particular areas I visited.) I wonder if this is because government provides a large number of jobs. Given the number of traffic cops at most major intersections, they must employ a hundred thousand people. Also, the sidewalks are kept very clean (aside from torn-up sidewalks and the like due to construction) by countless government employees armed with brooms. (The streets are certainly cleaner than those I saw in India, despite, if I recall correctly, seeing more people littering in Shanghai than in India.)

Miscellaneous
Many of the new apartment buildings complexes are extensive, featuring dozens of copies of identical buildings. I guess if the Chinese decide to design and build one building, they might as well (given the population) build a lot of them at the same time.

I'm told the Chinese have dates in Ikea, and love Swedish meatballs.

Neat facts:

• Shanghai has a huge population (18 million, plus or minus).
• The legal marriage age is 22 for men and 20 for women.
• There is no minimum drinking age.