Socks, Street Food and Sickness in Shanghai
Ten days in Shanghai. I’d love to say they flew by in a blur, but that would only be partially true because a couple days were excruciatingly enduring. The length of a typical vacation was only a pit stop on the long road ahead of me. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing and most of my days were occupied with preparations for the upcoming journey away from westernized civilization.
My first day was spent exploring the Shikumen houses in the trendy Xintiandi district, which turned out to be a mildly amusing visual treat, but unfortunately lacked any true substance. The only other attempt I made was to visit the Bund for a brief glimpse of the futuristic Pudong skyline. Unfortunately, I chose to visit on Chinese National Holiday, and had to squeeze through one of the largest crowds I’ve ever seen just to spot the famous buildings for a few seconds before police began clearing way for another salvo of tourists.
Between three trips to the Indian Consulate to start my visa application, getting my camera repaired, hunting for malaria pills, buying knock-off brand-name socks at the fake market and a lengthy stopover to the post office, I had to battle it out with a dreadful case of simultaneous violent vomit and gushing diarrhea attacks!Although the ten days may have been devoid of exploration and adventure, the nights out with cool friends, delicious BBQ street food, beers, booze, bars and clubs with live music certainly showed me where the city’s cosmopolitan appeal is drawn from. I was happy enough to fill in drums on a few songs with an excellent jazz band at “The House of Blues and Jazz” so I got out a bit of that urge to play music.
I’m not quite sure what opinion to form of Shanghai. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship. Being a huge international city, it has a great range of resources and freedom of choice, but along with that there is a madness, unnecessary frantic pace of life and extraordinarily high cost of living. There were a few relatively interesting areas, but nothing quite like the districts of Tokyo or New York that give other super-cities a characteristic that might be called ‘charm’.
Click here for my miscellaneous photos from Shanghai
.
Tags: - Music, - Photography, - Preperation, Asia, China, Shanghai
Adam Shane
I love your honesty (and your photography)!