Sarah's travelling blog

Well, somehow I find myself in Shanghai, and the nine months I spent two years planning and waiting for are over. I’m not being woken up by the Mai Dofu man at five a.m., the background noise is incessant traffic rather than birdsong and sheep, and there isn’t a film of dust on every surface, item and dreadlock. The last two weeks in Chen Jia Gou were busy. I was looking for a teaching job in Zhengzhou or Jiaozuo that would allow me to be in Chen Jia Gou for three days a week, but although a couple of them said it would be ‘possible’, none of them wanted to give a guarantee, and if I were to come back to China to learn I’d be teaching every day, I wouldn’t be very happy! I had a real mix of emotions during the last week ranging from excitement about seeing my niece and nephew to not wanting to leave Chen Jia Gou and feeling really sad at the prospect. I find it a surreal thought that this time tomorrow I’ll be at Pudong Airport waiting for my flight, it seems like a very long time since I was at Heathrow on my way to Kolkatta! This is my third time studying tai chi in China, and this time, finally, I feel that I found the right place for me. Although I liked the other teachers I studied with, I feel as though I’ve found the place I really need and want to be in, and I’m already excited at the thought of coming back in January. Shanghai! Like, WOW! Coming from a small, dusty village to this huge, gleaming metropolis was like reconnecting with the 21st century after six months spent in the past. Shanghai is a vast, ultra hi-tech consumer-driven temple of rampant capitalism. Starbucks, Costa Coffee and McDonalds hover at every corner, and the streets are filled with Western names on sparkling shop fronts – Gucci, Louis Vuitton, H & M, Marks & Spencer (with a patriotic window display in red, white and blue), Range Rover, Ferrari, Porsche…… There’s LOTS of money in this city. The main shopping street, Nanjing Road, must be several times the length of Oxford Street, and all the streets around it are also full of shops and people buying Stuff. Asians certainly know how to build shopping malls. Even in London I’ve not seen malls like they have in Asia, and Shanghai is no exception. They are everywhere, and unavoidable. Yesterday I shopped in one, ate dinner in another and passed through a third on my way to the metro station. Today I’ve been in two. Right now I’m in Costa Coffee with an iced latte in a ridiculously swanky, glittery mall with lots of expensive looking boutiques. Just down the road, though, is a much older street of little shops. It was fascinating to walk down; narrow alleys opened up giving a view into the backs of the shops and the flats above them. Lots of old guys sitting about in vests and long socks (most attractive!) playing chess and smoking, women hanging up the washing, and people just getting on with ordinary life. It felt like a world away from the money/ glamour/ glitziness of modern Shanghai, and must be what a lot of the city used to be like. Some of the buildings are derelict now which seems a shame as they have much more character to them than the endless tower blocks that dominate the skyline. My first couple of days here I was extremely tired. All those weeks of five hours of sleep caught up with me and, feeling extremely disinclined to do anything to physical, I got a ticket for the Big Bus sightseeing tour. Usually I shun things like that because they’re not cheap and they’re full of tourists, obviously, but this time it was exactly what I needed to do; sit on a bus, watch the city and take lots of photos. You get a 24 hour ticket for a tenner which isn’t too bad and the bus goes everywhere an average tourist is likely to want to go. I went to the Bund and admired the skyscrapers (going back later to look at them at night), and to Yu Gardens which is a beautiful classical Chinese garden, and Jing’an and the Jade Buddha Temples, both of which are exquisite. And that’s it! This time next week I have my induction session for my new EFL job, and the week after that it’s back to grammar, vocabulary and trying to remember how to spell (it’s much more difficult when you’re writing on a board for some reason). And in the end, Spurs didn’t win the League, or anything, but it doesn’t really matter; there’s always next year…….