Shanghai (de)constructed
I'm a little P.O'd 'cause I wrote this wicked post and it totally got destroyed, so I'm trying again, and it's way less cool.I arrived in Shanghai a few days ago, so I apologize for the delay. Classes started the day after I arrived and with all of the registration and everything that’s been going on (including reading an entire novel for tomorrow. That blows) I’ve been (understandably) a little busy. Let’s remember where I left off:
The train to shanghai.
The train was awesome. It was a 12 hour ride, of which I was conscious for about 3 of them (I slept most of the way). The train station is huge in Beijing (and Shanghai). There are a number of tracks, and my waiting area was up on the second level (with all of the other “rich” passengers who can afford to travel on the sleeper & soft cars). I was in the first car behind the engine (which meant 10 minutes to walk from the middle of the platform – the thing was HUGE!), I had a top bunk and met a girl from Shanghai who spoke some English, which was nice. It’s a tiny little room, smaller than my Wally dorm and slept 4 people. My suitcase was far too big to store up above, so I shoved it under our “table” where we were to have dinner. Yes, dinner was provided. An airline-type meal of pork, rice and veggies. It also came with two mini-plums, a dessert cookie thing and a bun. I saved everything for the morning except the hot part of the meal. The train itself was cool, kind of loud, so I slept with earplugs, but I got to sleep around 9pm (yes, very early I know, but I was tired!) and got up around 6, giving me about an hour before we arrived in Shanghai. As we were about 45 minutes from the city, I left my room and stood in the small hallway. There are fold out seats outside of the rooms (which are all on one side of the car) beside a window so that as you walk down the hallway, one side is rooms, the other is just windows. I saw lots of construction (like Beijing) and factory after factory, half of which appeared empty. I should look into the area and see what it was. It was on the western side of the train, so if anyone cares to Google it, let me know!
I arrived at the terminal at about 7:10 am, and after getting myself completely lost, unable to contact the person who was picking me up, I wandered over to a hotel, where I found a phone & some internet access. I checked my e-mail for the right phone number and gave Mary, our Fudan contact a call. She is the sweetest person I’ve ever met, so adorable and friendly, she’s great! She also described herself as tall (which after spending a few weeks here is kind of funny, but I guess tall is all relative – she’s shorter than I am) and wearing sandals, which was hilarious, because so was everyone else. It was like playing where’s Waldo at the Shanghai railway station, only I didn’t really know what Waldo looked like. (or Where’s Wilma – which was never as fun)
The city is completely different than Beijing. The businesses are huge, everyone lives in an apartment, and I have yet to see anything resembling the hutongs of Beijing. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right area, but I don’t think they exist here. It’s all highrises and small trendy clothing stores, with a Hello-Kitty type store thrown in for good measure. Modern is definitely a good word to describe it here. The people still share some of the same characteristics as the people of Beijing, playing communal card games & other activities outside at night, and bikes galore, but there are also a lot more white people (and pretty much every colour comination you can imagine) because of the proximity of the international residence and the university itself. I’m on the 19th floor, which is still not high enough to get away from the constant horn honking and general street noise. People honk their horns here for absolutely everything: to signal that they are coming up on a pedestrian or a bike-rider, out of anger, for fun, to pass, to communicate in general. If you can count to 3 without hearing a car horn, you’re lucky, because it doesn’t happen very often. The construction here is also pretty consuming. The university is getting ready for it’s centennial (which is this year 1905-2005) so there are buildings being erected all over campus, and the general expansion of the city to meet the growing population needs. I’ll take some pictures from my balcony (yes, ,balcony!) and post it soon.
(I’ve figured out how to post photos, but it will still take me a bit to get them all up - and when I do, I have to figure out the best way to share them)
Class has been good, we started on the 1st and have been going pretty much every day save Sunday (yes, that includes a Saturday class) because Emily Hill has to go back to Queen's to teach, so she's cramming in as much Chinese history as possible. Actually we're only reading about the Qin dynasty (the first one, especially looking at philosophical teachings from 400-200 BCE), and cool things like foot binding, concubines/courtesans, nationalizing the appearance of men and the average life of a local elite man named Shen-fu in a book called 6 records of a floating life. It's pretty neat, and the class itself is kind of useless, so it's an interesting conflict in my head. The subway system is waaaayyy more packed than Beijing (some describe it here as the Asian New York) and I have yet to use the bus to figure out where to go. I will post again shortly, although I'm doing much less now that school has started, I'm going to the Sex Museum on Saturday and hopefully some shopping!! Woo hoo!!
Miss everyone!
posted by Jenn @ 9:41 p.m.
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