Day 10 – Travel Day – Shanghai

We’re moving on from Xian today, and heading to Shanghai.  Our flight is at 11am, so we’re heading out from the hotel at 8am.  It’s not like getting to the airport in Wellington, so we’re essentially leaving for the airport 3 hours prior to catching a domestic flight.  The trip to the airport was as slow as you would expect in a small city of 6 million people, who are all trying to get to work first thing on a Monday morning.  No dramas getting to the airport, through the airport, and all the way to Shanghai.  After the previous security overkill, I had re-arranged all my stuff so that I could pull it all out and present it as simply as possible, so this time round I didn’t even have to pull out my laptop. 

Tracy, our Shanghai guide met us as well, cleared baggage claim and then we got onto the train into the city.  The train travels at different speeds at different times of the day, and our time of the day meant we were on a slow train.  Watching the slow train sit on a steady 301 kph for the 8 minutes it took to get into Shanghai was quite a sight to behold.  Apparently when we return to the airport on Saturday morning we will be on the fast train and this will travel at 431kph, bringing the trip down to 7 minutes. We then had a 20 minute trip from the train station to our hotel with Sam our driver in Shanghai. 

That was basically it from an organised perspective, so we spent the afternoon wandering around Nanjing Road, the main shopping pedestrian mall and down to The Bund, the walkway down by the river.  Shanghai is China’s second biggest city with 24 million people.  I’ve never heard of the biggest one, which is near the 3-gorges dam in the centre of China.  We had a lovely Chinese dinner in the 8^th floor of a building on Nanjing Road, and apart from a wayward piece of beef that destroyed the cleanliness of both my shorts and shirt it was an uneventful dinner.  After dinner we headed back down to the Bund to take some photos of the beautiful night time cityscape.

We’ve been hearing a lot about China’s one child policy that was implemented in 1979.  Apparently it has worked very well, but now China is suffering from an ageing population and needs to take the brakes off a bit.  When they started easing off, if both parents came from a single child family, they were allowed to have a second child, but now if one of the parents comes from a one child family, they are allowed to have a second child.  Girls are now preferred to boys, because the men’s family are expected to provide the house for the women, so if you have a son, you will be having to provide a house for your future daughter in law and grandchildren.  Girls are cheaper because the parents just have to pay for the wedding, although at an average cost of $NZD300k, it’s no cheap affair.  We’ve seen lots of couple having their wedding photos taken on the Bund, and these are usually taken months before the wedding and the bride will rent 7 or 8 dresses to be photographed in.

Fashion in China is also quite different to what we are used to, and some of the trends are quite concerning.  On hot days, the men roll their t-shirts up to their armpits and walk around with their tubby little bellies showing.  I have so far, and will continue, to refrain from participating in this practice.  Women are also guilty of some fashion sins, no greater than the ankle high stocking worn with a above the knee dress.  I’m not sure on what planet this is deemed attractive, but it’s certainly not one that I’m ever going to get comfortable on.

Finally, we’ve just read in the newspaper about a shop in Shanghai called “Shanghai Sick Notes”, which offers slackers a “legitimate” sick note from one of the local hospitals so that they can extend a holiday, take a day off from a job they hate, or slope off work for a day to watch their favourite team playing in the Football World Cup.  This is, of course, decidedly dodgy, so it’s disguise it that you go to a wedding invitation site, and in return for providing your details that will go on your “wedding invitation”, they will provide you with the appropriate sick note.  Hopefully there are options other than the wedding invitation one, as the happily married amongst us might have difficulty explaining to our wives, employers and the fraud prevention unit why we are applying for wedding invitations on the internet.