003. Poor Shanghai

Shanghai isn’t just one city.  There’s poor Shanghai, rich Shanghai, new Shanghai, old Shanghai, communist Shanghai, and a million other Shanghai(s) that I haven’t discovered yet.

First impression… I never actually believed in overpopulation but Shanghai is certainly making an argument that it exists.  I thought Germany was crowded but I don’t remember ever accidentally touching so many people.

My first couple days have been spent mostly in poor Shanghai.  Certainly, my first hostel wasn’t the image of wonderful Chinese service that I had expected.  I started having suspicions that I was in poor Shanghai when I stepped off the metro into a pile of garbage.  It got stinkier and stinkier all the way to my room.  Source of most of the stink in Shanghai: my 40 year old Chinese roommate, assisted by my 6 other 30 year old Chinese roommates. Not exactly what I expected from an international hostel haha.

I slept with the door open, window open, found a fan and turned it on “very loud,” and turned the window A/C to “very cold.”  I was still woken by new smells the whole night, I didn’t realize how easily smells can wake me.  

In spite of the smells and the fact that they didn’t speak ANY English, they were very nice guys.  They got close enough that I woke up at 1am and they invited me to come to the club with them (had to pass it up in the interest of beating my jetlag).  They were impressed with my not-so-impressive Chinese, laughed and laughed with (and at) me, found me some good food, and stopped smoking in the room when I asked them to.

So when I think about “poor Shanghai,” the spirit of it wasn’t

so poor after all.