Saturday, October 27, 2012

Bye bye, Shanghai!

Okay, a lot has happened since my last post: 


1) I finally arrived Xi'an!
2) I may have found an apartment there.
3) I met (and became part of) the JV family.
4) I made a lot of new friends.
5) I went to my first Chinese banquet.
6) I sang at a karaoke bar (yes, yes I did).
7) I went grocery shopping.

So let’s get to it!

In the about 19 days I spent in Shanghai, I managed to not get hit by a seemingly infinite number of cars, buses, motorcycles/motor scooters, and bikes. I’m pretty proud of that. If you’ve never been to Shanghai or a big city in China, it may be difficult to understand how navigating city streets on foot without getting run over would require much skill, but in China, city walking is almost a sport.

There is no “pedestrian right of way” despite the crosswalks and walk/don't walk lights, so crossing the street requires a super-sensitive awareness of one’s surroundings, taking into account anywhere from four to six official lanes of traffic (which actually means more like six to eight “lanes”) coming from multiple directions, right turn lanes that don’t stop for pedestrians, and motorcycles that weave in and out of traffic. It helps to follow the Chinese pedestrians rather than whatever the streetlights happen to indicate since quite often, drivers pay no heed to the lights. Even the sidewalks are not “vehicle free” as they are used by bikes and motorcycles as well as pedestrians.

Being on the road in a car is not much better. The best analogy I have heard for car travel in China is that the traffic flows like water—if there is an opening, someone will fill it, regardless of whether or not the space is in an official lane, and forward movement will continue, however slow it may be. Thanks to my skillful taxi driver, I arrived at the airport unscathed.

I haven’t been able to get any good pictures of the traffic though.
I did get this shot of a cool building from the taxi on the way to the airport.
The Pudong airport is nice, as far as airports go. I arrived three hours early for my 13:00 flight, which was sufficient time to attempt to check-in, be sent to another counter to pay an overweight bag fee (luckily two of my colleagues who were in Shanghai took two of my three big suitcases with them back to Xi’an about two weeks ago, so I only had the one), check-in, go through security, walk to the gate (I always seem to be at the gates farthest away from everything), and check out the free WiFi.
On the way to gate 5.
Nice flat screen TV showing a football (that's "soccer" to
the Americans) game.
Opening page for the free WiFi at Pudong International Airport.
Ciao, Shanghai!
One of the neat things about domestic flights in China is that you get a meal on flights that are two hours (I think) or more--the flight from Pudong to Xi'an was about 2.5 hours. Sorry, no pictures of my lunch, but I had an aluminum tin of bow-tie pasta with a tomato and asparagus sauce (the vegetarian option), a roll, and some watermelon. Fairly decent for airline food.

Next up, the first pictures from Xi'an, my new temporary digs, and the great apartment hunt!

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