Shanghai

I have been in Shanghai a week now. It’s the longest I have been here since I came to China. So, probably the longest time I have spent in this size a city (Dalian’s a small town compared to Shanghai)!!

Shanghai has its merits: convenience and variety: great subway, more shopping malls per square mile than you could shake a stick at, lots of restaurants, bars and coffee shops, not to mention the best looking women in China! For foreigners, it is far more convenient than somewhere like Dalian, as a lot of places have bilingual menus etc. The environment here isn’t as bad as I had previously imagined. I can see blue skies here every day, as opposed to the hazy grey-blue in Guangzhou or Beijing! So, Shanghai has a lot going for it.

However, I still don’t know if I really want to live here. Everything is SO expensive: there is a lot of money in this town, land and rent is very expensive, so this pushes the price up! Another thing is the sheer amount of people in the place. The Dalian area is said to have six million people, more than the population of Ireland. Shanghai has maybe 20 million or some crazy figure like that! Everywhere there are crowds and crowds of people. I like Dalian as it is not so crowded. One of the final downers is the weather. It is so damn hot at the moment! It’s Sweatsville, Tennessee here right now. I walk out the door and in less than a minute I am pouring sweat! Not good. Maybe it’s fine for Chinese people since they don’t seem to sweat as much as us white folks! That’s what they say anyway, but I have had to teach a class of 32 maritime students (all lads) after they had played basketball at lunch break. It didn’t smell pretty!

Digressions aside, maybe I could get used to the heat and crowds in Shanghai and if I earned enough money, maybe I could afford to go to the pub or a nice restaurant now and again! Dalian may lack the excitement of Shanghai, but I’m happy enough there for the time being.