Sometimes I wish I had Twitter in my brain.
This trip is one of them. Here’s a smattering of things that I would have Tweeted if I were into Tweeting and I had a direct hookup to my cerebral cortex.
There are too many freaking people in China. No, really. They are also insanely rude when it comes to public transportation. On BART at rush hour, people will still try to respect each others’ space and give up their seats to elders. None of that here… people just push and shove from behind to squish everyone into the car… and when seats open up, it’s a veritable musical-chairs fight to claim it.
And driving is, for what it’s worth, almost definitely worse. I should note that personal cars only make up a very small percentage of traffic that dominates Shanghai’s streets… most of it is taxis and buses, and pretty much one hundred percent of them are more impatient and more aggressive than the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered in LA.
… All right, those wouldn’t have fit in tweets (i don’t think), but here’s a few that would.
- The weather here is fairly temperate. It’s not humid hot, but the air feels wet and thick somehow.
- Shanghai basically reminds me of San Francisco (with a shit ton more people; like it’s Market Street everywhere) during the day and Las Vegas at night, with all the lights.
- Mmm, roasted water chestnuts. >__>
- God dammit, stupid smokers… freaking everywhere. Can’t really believe that LA’s air actually beats … anyone else’s out.
- In my memory, there are a couple odors that I associate specifically with China… and maybe Chinatown. I have no idea what exactly it is that I’m smelling, so it’s kind of disturbing… but there it is.
- Taking the metro is freaking cheap… like $0.30 cheap (in American dollars). Crazy.
- We had lunch with a ton of people I didn’t know and/or otherwise recognize, but they were my dad’s very good friends from when he went to college. So I was having a ton of those weird “zomg, my dad was young / my dad had best friends” flashes.
- My dad reading a sign for a movie theatre: “admission is half price every day”. Umm, yeeeaahh…
