"Welcome to Shanghai!" said the flashy neon and enormous buildings doing their best to peer through the thick smog and drizzle covering the city. Thanks to the typhoon and a detour via North Korean seas we arrived 5 hours late, leaving Sai san just enough time to pick me up at the port and show me around his stunning apartment in Pudong before jetting off to Hong Kong. I was left to fend for myself on my first night, striking up "conversation" with street food sellers who seemed very friendly and delighted that I wasn't American.
On day 2 I was "hello"d by 3 students from Xian in People's Square. They helped me to get Xiaolongbao, oishii little Shanghai dumplings, and then we went to a kind of tea ceremony, which was similar only in name to the Japanese version. We had lots of fun ordering different kinds of tea, rubbing hot tea cups over our faces, getting pissed on by an ornamental monkey used for measuring water temperature, and generally learning loads of cool stuff about Chinese tea culture. We bought tickets for the acrobatics that night, agreed to meet at 7:20 and then went our separate ways. Come the evening I couldn't manage to flag down a taxi so I accepted the offer of a homeless-looking old dude on a 3 wheel death machine with a seat on the back. Instantly converting to every religion under the sun I clambered aboard and set off on the most thrilling and petrifying ride of my life. We jumped red lights, sliced through oncoming traffic, beeped pedestrians and broke every rule in the book (if such a book exists in China and I doubt that strongly) to get me to the theatre on time. On time I was, and yet somehow didn't manage to meet Feng, Yu and Dan, which was a real shame. Anyway the acrobatics was fantastic, my favorite being 5 men riding motorbikes inside a 10-15 metre diameter cage ball! I also managed to help a girl studying Japanese in Lawsons on the same day. It was a great day!
Next day I went to the Shanghai Museum and saw all manner of jades, bronzes, paintings and calligraphy. Culture, man. Culture.
Shanghai was great if let down only by the incredible busyness of the place and wall to wall construction. I was pretty exhausted by the end and after a brutal struggle through the subway it was nice to get on the overnight train to Beijing!
