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Published: October 21st 2011
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It's been a good couple of days off, and while there is going to be another excursion (leaving tomorrow), I've taken some time to see some more of Shanghai. First, a couple of tips for anyone who wants to travel here.
1. Chinese people are loud, and there are a lot of them. Bring your headphones. There is very little peace or quiet to be had, especially in the cities, so be prepared to manufacture your own.
2. Traffic rules are loose, at best. Right on red is legal, and it doesn't have to give way to pedestrians, at least in practice, even if the law says otherwise. Even if you have a walk sign, you have to develop your awareness quickly and be prepared to avoid speeding cars, bikes, and scooters. I've adapted pretty well, and tend to be a more aggressive pedestrian than I am in the US, but also have a good sense of what the cars are going to do. I've seen a lot of people in our group though who are scared when cars come close to them, and their reaction is to stop, when often that's the worst thing you can do. The
best option, usually, is to keep moving with the intention you've got, but be ready to jump if a driver ignores that and wants to drive over the same area you want to traverse.
3. Haggling is the rule. If you want to buy something, be prepared to haggle. My rule of thumb, from what I've seen is to ask the price, then pay somewhere between a third and half of what I'm told. I get there by offering around 20% the price I'm quoted and letting them work me up from there, but some people in our group just choose the price they want to pay and keep repeating it until the shopkeeper either agrees or stops negotiating. I have no idea which is more successful. Unless you're just shopping in the wrong areas, everything is cheap, so even if you get taken you're still going to come out ahead. My two purchases so far have been a new set of headphones (see rule one) which would have cost around $70 in the US, which I got for around $8, and a very small paper kite, which is quite intricately made, but which I probably overpaid for at
between $4 and $5, but I didn't mind since there was only one lady selling them, I really like the design, and I had to walk away and have her call me back to get that price.
One of the places I went walking the last couple days was the river South of our hotel. It's a park sort of along the lines of the Town Lake trail, but all paved and more intricately designed. There is a running trail made from the soft concrete that gets used in Austin sometimes, probably around 4 miles long, altogether, and it travels along the river in what used to be an industrial area. The designers have left a lot of touches from the port that was here, so there are random loading cranes, hitches, boat anchors, etc all along the way. There is also an elevated walkway, and a massive artificial bouldering wall which is by far the best one I've ever seen. I'm very sad that I didn't bring my climbing shoes... if I had, I'd probably be there every day for the rest of the trip working out. The interesting thing about that wall, is that despite the fact
that it's clearly designed for a mix of climbers from total beginners to extreme pros (it's a wide variety of holds, angles, and overhangs), the only people I saw there using it were families with young kids. The oldest person I saw climbing on it in two days, aside from me, were a couple of teenage skateboarders. I haven't seen anyone with real climbing shoes or a chalkbag at all. What a waste!
I also took a train, then a walk to one of the few places in this city that really feel like you're in a communist state. Longhua Revolutionary Martyr's Cemetery was proposed starting in 1957 after the remains from 24 revolutionary fighters were discovered here, but atypically, construction didn't actually happen until 1994. More typically for China, once it was started, the engineering was complete within a year, and the entire huge park was open by 1997.
There are several large scale sculptures of the type found in most Communist and Authoritarian states, and of the type that most of the people against the Martin Luthor King Memorial, which just opened in DC, are against (it was a Chinese sculptor who has done a lot
of work for the State on projects just like this one). Datri and I went there during the evening, and while that meant that we didn't get to see a lot of the most historical parts, or go into the actual exhibits, I did manage to do some shooting of the sculptures and monuments while the light was perfect. That always makes me happy...
Today (the 18th) is Acia's birthday and there was a lovely surprise party for her... everyone met at the Bell Bar which is a cool little place, a bit on the expensive side, near the hotel. We had drinks there during happy hour (two for one, which literally means that when you order a drink, they bring you two), then went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. I was having a good time taking stealthy photos of the company at both places, so there will be a large number of very candid photos of everyone on my flickr site. Everyone on this trip is beautiful and so when the light is good, it's easy to take good portraits... It also helps that I really like pretty much everyone on the trip, so it's fun catching
them at opportune times...
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