“The 7 Dont’s” …. and Hooters
Sunday, April 8th, 2007So, I guess Shanghai has an active campaigne to help alleviate some of the things that I have been complaining about. There are actually billboards and public service announcements stating the “7 Donts”… these are:
1. Do not swear
2. Do not spit in public places
3. Do not smoke in non-smoking areas
4. Do not litter
5. Do not J-walk
6. Do not pee or poo in public places
7. Do not yell excessively (or something like that)
They also have a special rule in Shanghai asking people to speak Mandarin instead of Shanghainese in certain situations or something like that. I’m not too sure what the deal is with that last rule.
Anyway, John and I found one of the Hooters Restuarants in Shanghai last night (yes, there is more than one here). We decided just to go have a beer and wings (for John of course, I had fries and a coke), and then we met up with a guy from our hostel (Jeff), who is moving to Shanghai to work. He actually speaks Mandarin, which is soooo cool (he’s a white guy). So, we hit the town but not like the night before (where John ended up playing patty cake with another grown man………….haha).
This time, we went to a Taiwanese restaurant and tried some kind of shaved ice dessert thing and Jeff, along with another girl from our hostel, talked about Shanghai and how things have changed so much. Jeff seemed like an encyclopedia of all the quirky little facts that nobody talks about China… he knew so many cool little facts…. so many so that we actually were out until 3am! Actually Meizhen (the girl), Jeff, John and I walked a pretty far distance in the middle of the night. Of course, we stopped at a corner store to buy some 3 yuan beer so we could walk down the street with some class (they didn’t have any brown paper bags though). It took us about an hour to get back to our hostel, although we did make a very interesting stop…. Meizhen studied medicine here and she actually brought us into the hospital that she studied at! It was a little awkward but at the same time very cool to see… they operate a lot looser than they do in North America. The beds were so close together and there’s no such thing as a curtain between each bed… they crammed everyone quite closely together.
It was about 3am by the time we got back but surprisingly street vendors were still out frying little snacks! It’s funny, although there is so much to see everywhere we go, I think John and I have the most interesting times doing things like randomly walking around with people. I think we were fortunate this time to meet people that knew so much about Shanghai so it was educational at the same time.
After 2 late nights in a row, John and I decided not to do too much today… we went to a bookstore and now we are at an internet cafe. We will go to the Bund and Nanjing Road tonight but that’s about it. Tomorrow morning, we will be catching a plane back to Hong Kong…. meaning, the pics from China will be up on flickr soon!
cheng.ev