Shanghai Update 01 August 2013

In three days I will have been in Shanghai for a month! 

I thought in this piece I would just present some sketches--impressions of my time here so far.

Weather

*Around 2 pm the day reaches its maximum temperature of 106.  Descending into the metro, I often see people sleeping on the stairs or sprawled out flat on the floor.  Ninety percent of them are not homeless.  Some are construction workers or street sweepers, taking a rest, lest they collapse.  Some are retirees, sleeping here in the cool air before the metro closes at 10, forcing them back into their sweltering, tile-roofed homes for another sweaty, sleepless night.

*This afternoon and yesterday afternoon we've had thunderstorms.  I can look out my 20th floor window (watching the view is better than watching TV) and see people running for cover.  The sky turns gray with water and silver-blue with lightning.  Yesterday there was a huge crack of thunder--the lightning must've hit something.  I can hardly see the skyscrapers just blocks away.  It's as if they're gone.  A whitish mist envelops everything.  This morning I could see blue sky overhead--most of the time, I can't, but the air had been scrubbed of pollution, at least for a while.

T-shirts I've seen

*Easier said than done

*London

*Upset

* Long live the Queen (on a cute Chinese college chick)
* Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.  (Oversized Hooters shirt worn by a dark-skinned, messy-haired Chinese female tourist)

*Port Townsend, Washington (holla!)

*Beer, cigs, and VHS

*Circus is not Uncle McDono

*Madonna--as a three-eyed cartoon with fangs

*Baby Mio

*Adidas is the sh*t

*I'n hepig tomcat (whatever that means)

Jing-an Temple Park

When I cross West Nanjing Road, right out of the metro, there's a tree-lined path about as long as a football field.  The trees look and smell like green-leaf maples back home, but their leaves are brighter, their trunks fatter, with thin, flaky bark in different shades of gray.

It is shaded and breezy here, with people taking advantage of the many nice benches.  Ladies in their 20s and 30s walk by in heels, holding their pretty umbrellas overhead--shades of midnight blue, plum, and pink, with lace-like mesh and sequins.  Children and retirees alike lick ice cream cones and chow on Subway sandwiches, and a few adults are smoking.

The air seems easier to draw in, the pace slower--one dark-skinned foreigner is even napping, lulled by the loud-quiet-loud racket of the crickets in the trees overhead.  A few finches (identical to the ones at home) chirp happily.

Safety

*One of the guys in my intake group saw this: 

A man on a scooter.  Normal, right?  No.  His wife was sitting in front of him--face to face, her legs over his, like Cameron Diaz straddling Tom Cruise in "Knight and Day".  The woman was holding a tiny infant between them.  No helmets.  The cherry on top?  The man was on his cell phone.

*On my way home from the metro station one night, I saw a man with a concrete saw.  He was crouched down--the block he was cutting on the ground.  The saw was grinding away.  Sparks flew.  The man had on shorts and flip flops.  No shirt, no gloves, no goggles.