Honeymoon: Shanghai

B and I arrived in Shanghai in mid-August, the most modern and developed city in China. It's strange to be here after having traveled in Yunnan (a province in the Southwest of China, which is quite poor and undeveloped), because things are so different here. They have many convenience stores open 24-hours, enormous freeways (that are still congested with traffic at all hours), and immensely tall buildings. We are living in one, on the 18th floor (it has 30 floors I think), which is very nice indeed. Unlike Yunnan, in Shanghai if you have money, any level of luxury is available. But a large percentage of the population does not have money, so it's almost like the poor and the rich live in parallel worlds, with the rich eating $100/person dinners and living up in the clouds, while the poor live in crumbling concrete 5-story buildings and eat dinner for $0.50/person.

Shanghai used to be a treaty port, so most of the older architecture looks very European and Art Deco. The newer buildings, which have almost all been built since 1990, are pink and purple and circular, and look like they were designed for the Jetsons. The contrasts are strange to see, but exciting; I feel like everything is available in Shanghai, good, bad and indifferent, whereas in the rest of China, choice (in housing, food, clothes, etc.) is generally quite limited. I think staying here for a month will prove to be quite interesting. The Shanghai Museum is supposed to be the best in China, and I am very excited to see that.

Using the Internet is a little tricky here. Most of the Internet cafes here are dark, smoky caverns where people go to play online games for hours at a time (like 20 hours straight) while chain-smoking. It's a whole culture, mostly patronized by young guys (although perhaps 1/3 are girls) and not approved of by the government, who mounts propaganda campaigns about the evils of online gaming ("It will kill you!!!"). The Internet is censored here too, so there's a bunch of sites (all blogs, for instance) that I can't look at.