The day after the Marriage Market I kept thinking of how different our cultures and societies are. And, how different China is from what I expected before I came. I expected something more….. communism, when it really is capitalism, consumerism and commersialism (is that a word even? Nvm). It's likely the most capitalist country I've ever seen actually. Everywhere you look, there are things for sale, stores and shopping malls. Likely, it's different in rural China. That'll be on my next trip here.
Found a new kind of Apple store, that also sells pool cues. They are expanding! iCue!
Here's the real one, cool entrance, feels like walking into the lair of a supervillain. No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!
A store that sells action figures and toys.
Shopping mall.
Glam girlz.
Bad luck, getting a Blue Screen of Death on a large public display like that.
Today I wanted to go off the beaten path (worn expression that). I read about an area which had both a nice shopping district and some residential areas closeby (ie I need Starbucks daily, and I was still on the hunt for some things to bring home). There are construction sites all over Shanghai (China) and in this huge city, with increasing urbanisation from rural China, you don't build a house. You build an area. 4 skyscrapers or more (with Swedish eyes, ie 10+ floors).
This area had a mix of older buildings, ranging from what seemed to be upper middle-class 2-floor buildings to tall ones. I walked around for quite many hours, stopped a while here and there to seep in the atmosphere. It was a nice experience, definitively sth I would recommend to anyone, but perhaps you need to do it alone. Going with someone would likely not be the same thing, at least I wouldn't have the same attention to what was going on around me, listening to people talking, the sounds of others working etc. I got a lot of eyes at me, it was obvious that this wasn't an everyday event here. None hostile though (that I saw).
Some residential neighborhood.
Model quarter, whatever that means or brings.
Building, building, building.
In the evening I went back downtown to do a similar thing at Nanjing road (the large shopping street) after closing time at 22. I soon headed home though, the haschisch, lasers, female "massage" offers got a bit tiring after a while (to be clear, those were separate offers, not smoking-pot-and-shooting-lasers-massage-offers). So I took a taxi home. But it didn't stop there. 30 min after returning "home" I got a phone call on the hotel phone… A female voice, "Massaggii?". I read about this in reviews on Hotels.com, it apparently happens on all kinds of hotels, even 5-star hotels. The key factor is "guy returning to hotel alone". The guard or receptionist (they were the only ones there) must be trying to earn a little extra commission. And no, the title does not imply I accepted, I merely had two fun titles to chose from. I chose both.
Shanghai subway.
