Shanghai -- Last Day and Getting Home - June 2 and 3rd

[liralen]

Our very last day in China was in Shanghai. The hotel was in this middling area where it was within very close driving distance to the shopping districts, but there wasn't all that much that was withing walking distance

Comments

[sophiap]

Amazing pictures! I love the one of the high rise with the laundry hanging out. I've missed many of your China entries what with this, that and the proverbial other thing, and now I really want to go back and read through your whole trip from start to finish.

[liralen]

*smiles* Given that I posted them over nearly five months it's not surprising that you missed them here and there. I do hope you enjoy when you get the chance!

Yeah... those high rises with laundry hanging out of them always just... bemused me. *laughs* I don't think that in the US you can even open a window on a high rise... so seeing all this stuff hanging out the windows just amazed me.

[incandescens]

Clearly an absolutely incredible trip, and I wish I could come up with a better adjective than to say that it sounds, well, *stuffed full*... so much seen, so much experienced.

I'm very glad you all enjoyed it (a shame about the sickness!) and it has been really interesting to read your entries and see the photographs.

[liralen]

Stuffed is entirely apropos!! Yes... so much in there, I think we're still processing some of it....

Yes. Definitely enjoyed it and my father's been commenting to me in private about these entries saying that he's very glad to have them, too, as he hasn't remembered it all... so having something in detail was very nice.

It has certainly been interesting going back over the memories...

Thank you so much for the lovely comments along the way! It's quite encouraging while I'm writing these.

[grey_lady]

Thank you for sharing your trip and letting me see some through your eyes.

[liralen]

Very very happy to do so!!

[elfkura]

First of all, I have to do this

[liralen]

I take it you lived there for a while?

Mmm... it's interesting seeing what's behind the image presented. Thanks for your details and I'm glad you made it out of that mess! eek.

[elfkura]

Being Taiwanese in China has its.... downsides. Good thing I was semi-fluent in Malaysian Hokkien, haha.

My parents were in Shanghai full time between 2000 and 2010 since my father worked there. That's where I went summer and winter breaks from 2001 through 2007. After graduating in 2007, I lived in Shanghai full time for a year and worked with my parents. Sometime between 2005 and 2006, my mother's good friends were transferred to Suzhou, China for a couple of years - hence our frequent trips there. Parents closed their plant in 2010 when the new labor laws became all sorts of troublesome for foreigner-owned businesses, including but not limited to said laws being altered almost on a yearly basis.

I was back in Shanghai last year. It's changed, again...

*grinds teeth and curbs need to rant*....

Glad you made so many good memories though because one day, China might do something crazy like the 3-stooges dam incident again (I call it that for a reason) and your pictures are the only evidence anything existed =).

[liralen]

=)

Wow... so a LOT of time there...thanks for saying about what you've seen! Wow.

[r_ness]

I think that on the most part, the tours really do try to protect us, and I keep getting this feeling that in China they really don't want us to be running around on our own.I have to agree with the bit about protecting you for tours in general, not just about Chinese tours. What varies is what it is you're being protected from. I got a chance to wander off from my tour in Shanghai also, on my first trip to China many years ago, and really have never taken a tour in China since. I say this because I got a very similar feeling in the tour I went on in Cairo last year. (In that case I think the tour guide thought he'd make more money if we were more dependent on him

[liralen]

Oooo... I like your goal of taking the subways... We really enjoyed our subway ride in Beijing, and I had the same feeling that you did, that it was safer on it than in several big cities here in the US.

It's kind of cool having that feeling confirmed, and yeah, I suspect it is different things in different places depending on the tour. And you've travelled a great deal more than we have.

[r_ness]

Oooo... I like your goal of taking the subways... We really enjoyed our subway ride in Beijing, and I had the same feeling that you did, that it was safer on it than in several big cities here in the US.

:) I've joked that my travel basically consists of flying somewhere and then taking transit to interesting places to eat. Beijing's great for that, because there are so many great places to eat. Aside from the irritating fact that the subway shuts down at midnight and the night bus system is pretty skeletal, you can get to those places without ever setting foot in a taxi.

The thing about crime in Chinese cities is that your chances of getting shot or mugged are definitely lower than in the States, but your chance of being pickpocked or scammed are almost equally likely higher. But I think in terms of microclimates when I think of urban crime. It seems more useful to look on a neighborhood level than in terms of cities overall.

Also:

That walking through Denver, there's this small spot of concentrated high rises, but MOST of town

[liralen]

Yeah... I got that feeling about the crime rates, good to have you confirm that, too.

I love your way of traveling... eating what's really there is often important to me, but getting the gut microbes to match up in just one trip was a little too much for me.

Mmm... I like your comparison to the shaping of the cities, too. Vancouver was like that, too.... LA's almost all sprawl... SD is that way, too, as is Seattle. I'll have to visit New York City someday... I keep saying that, and I even have friends who live a train ride away. Thanks!!!