Okay, okay, I’m getting back on track. Here’s what I wrote at the end of my first full day in China:

Shanghai is big. Chaotic, cacophonic. Cold and muddy. Today we travelled by train, subway, bus, taxi and foot. The food is good. People are reasonably friendly. The streets teem with Volkswagen Santanas and decaying mopeds. I am going to bed.

The next day I took this photo from the room I was sharing with Chris and Mike.

I really liked Shanghai, mostly because it was so different from anything I’d experienced before. On the third day we had a look around the flash, touristy district on the Huangpu river waterfront which includes The Bund, the old British concession, which has some cool 19th-century buildings. Across the river is an ultra-modern monstrosity, the Pearl TV Tower. A bit like the Sky Tower on steroids.

(when seen from this angle, with the two-globes-building in front, it looks rather unfortunately symbolic of Shanghai’s virile economy).

Later, we walked around one of the many poor areas that I liked to think of as being the ‘real’ Shanghai. It was not a safe place for poultry.

A lot of these neighbourhoods are being demolished by the city to make room for new apartment blocks and such. Apparently that’s part of the reason there are so many beggars in the richer parts of town.

I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on urban planning or what have you, but it seemed to me that the people in these poor areas were a lot less hurried and smiled more. Maybe living in a high-rise apartment and earning a steady wage isn’t the path to happiness?

We took a couple of hours to visit the Jade Buddha temple, which was fascinating - an island of tranquility and reflection amidst the chaos of modern China.

I think they’re burning incense as a form of prayer. Chris and Paul are commenting on the sense of spirituality we could feel there. It was almost tangible. I’m not talking about demonic oppression or whatever; what I felt was people reaching out to the ultimate reality. There was an air of contemplation. I felt a kind of kinship with the incense-wavers.

Hm, talking of the demonic…

…I think my flatmate Mike might be the AntiChrist (or perhaps the False Prophet, or the Whore of Babylon, depending on how you read the signs). Should I be worried?

One last photo, from the sacred carp pond back at the temple!