Shanghai part 2

OK. More on Shanghai.
People there were a lot more accustomed to Westerners I guess, or at least, there were a lot more people trying to sell you shit on the street. That part was actually really really annoying.

Oh. Shanghai introduced me to my new dangerous love: Sushi. The first night we were in Shanghai, Mike and I were wandering around down Nanjing street until we left a large shopping section and found a hotel type area, when we saw a small, overpriced but good sushi place and decided to go in. The layout is pretty devious: they had a conveyor belt rotating around with small dishes of food on them, each for only 6 quai (a bit less than $1), in addition to a full menu.

About twenty plates of food and several servings of sake later (which, I found, when warm is a very good deterent against the cold), I was very hooked. Good sushi instantly became one of my favorite things on the planet. The trap I am in is that it is murderously cheap in China, and terribly expensive in the States. I fear for my livelihood once I get back to the States and can no longer pay $10 for a fifteen course sushi meal.

Shanghai was fun. The last two days we had completely free, so we went to see the SMP skate park there, which is one of (the?) largest in the world. It was very large, and very empty. Partly that was due to the weather; it was overcast/drizzling most of our stay at Shanghai. But it was also partly due to the part of the city it was in: It was in a 'new district', which meant that it was basically an area that some city planners had declared was to be the next hot spot in Shanghai, threw down a bunch of roads, and started construction on some ridiculous housing and other projects. It was kind of bizarre actually; it had a few major arteries in it and even some fleshed out side streets, but there was absolutely nothing there with the exception of the skate park and a few other things. There was a lot of construction however; on the block next to the park these huge upscale apartment complexes were being built. Fu Dan University, the best university in Shanghai, was already putting up a new campus there too.

At the skate park we met a student from Fu Dan who went by the name of Ian in English. He was very smart and we spent the next (last) day in Shanghai going around the city with him. He showed us some of the spots that we would have missed in Shanghai; the city is so big that it's hard to find the places where the local college age kids would shop and spend time. It was lots of fun. It was fun to talk with a smart Chinese contemporary. He asked more questions of us than we did of him, but in answering the questions he asked we learned a lot.

Hm what else to say about Shanghai. Oh, we visited the site of the founding of the CCP, which is a girl's academy in the French Quarter. It was interesting. The highlight of it was the wax figure depiction of the formulative meeting of the CCP, which featured in its center a young Mao Zedong, standing in a Jesus-like pose with the rest of the founding members (there were thirteen, iroincally) positioned as in The Last Supper and looking at him intently as he poured his knowledge out. This is a rather hilarious revision of history; at the time Mao was actually an insignificant junior member who had been given the task of the stenographer. So in actuality, he probably sat in the corner, not the center, and the only time anyone talked to him was probably to send him off for a cup of coffee or something.

Oh well, he got the last laugh i guess. I'll post more later.

-Tom