So, I'm staying a while in China after all the hard work is done. Today was the first day of my short stay without work so I started out by surfing the web for ideas on what to do and see. The first point is already done now, riding the Maglev train!
Maglev is actually more of a demo of the technology rather than sth that is really needed. It's a short track from Longyuan Road metro station to Pudong airport (the metro continues all the way to the airport already). It costs 80rmb for a two way ticket and the ride takes about 7 minutes one way. What's cool is that the entire train is levitated (floating in the air) 1 cm above the magnetic tracks!! This makes it possible to accelerate to amazing 430 km/h!! (if you go, beware that during most of the day, they limit the speed to a measly 300km/h, it's only during two intervals per day they run at 430). During test runs they hit more than 500.
Maglev station
Yep, that fast!
The technology is actually German but they couldn't really build it as there was people owning land in the way, investigations that has to done before, and so on. The Chinese just do it, like Nike. (there's a test track in Germany but it is not open for the public).
Now I'm in central Shanghai, sitting at Starbucks. Cheap coffee here, brewed coffee, middle size, 18rmb. On my way here I was offered hashish two times within ten minutes.
Tomorrow I will check out the Marriage Market, where parents meet trying to find a spouse for their (grown up) children. They do this with or without the consent of their children, usually by looking on notes/ads written by other parents, "Man, responsible and caring, 165cm, have car, house.". Another way is to be introduced by someone else, like a teacher. Marriage is a primary marker for success in Chinese society. If you are a single woman at around 30, you are considered to be leftovers. Girls, and their parents, dread that they become 3S: single, seventies (ie born 197x, ~thirty years old), and stuck.
The Marriage Market is in a park, I hope I will find it.
I heard it's common with mopeds..
To me it feels like a lot of the security is just for show. Eg, in Shanghai (and Hong Kong and Beijing and Shenzhen) metro, you let sec personnell X-ray your bags etc when going into the metro, but they rarely actually look at the screens!
Took a walk downtown to The Bund for shooting the skyline at dusk.
