Alex

So, this is the third time I'm trying to post a text about Shanghai. The previous two times it dissapeared nicely when I tried to save it. And it was two long texts, because Shanghai is a big place. So. Not much patience left for the whole matter right now, you have to forgive me for posting something a bit more inadequate.

Anyway. Shanghai is the place of big-ass buildings and neon lights. It's the place of expensive restaurants and fancy bars. It's the place of watch/purse/shoes salesmen and beggars with babies on the street. Shanghai is a lot. A lot of everything, and there's a lot of everything that there's a lot of. Almost, one could say, a litte bit too much. It's big, and loud and shiny, and there is no place where you can escape it.

I made a new friend during my first night here, Mons Chan, a half-Scandinavian, half-Cantonese Canadian. We've been doing some sightseeing together.

We have, for example, walked around at the Shanghai Museum for hours and hours, making up facts about different objects displayed (my knowledge about the Bing-dynasty and the pig-dragon god Zhulong have now increased immensely).

We have been drinking fancy drinks and eating fancy desserts at the 87:th floor of the Jinmao Tower, Chinas tallest and the worlds fourth tallest building. It was swaying.

We have been watching a Chinese acrobatic show where some girls bend themselves in angles I previuosly believed only snakes could bend in, and Mons was dragged up on stage to be the target in the decent, old-shool, death defying knife-throwing business. Except they put  a blanket over his head everytime they threw a knife, and no knives were really thrown, the knife-throwers assistand stood beside Mons and stabbed the knifes around his arms and legs. He was so impressed, and the face he made when I showed him the video I taped with his digital camera was almost more fun to watch than it was to see him on stage.

And today, maybe we'll go to the waxmuseum during the day. But tonight we have a train to catch. "To where?", you wonder. To the one place I said I wouldn't go to. Back to Beijing.



Alex

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