the well-off, the scale and the life of a lawai

well China! Slightly further afield than Turkey!

I arrived and quickly estableshed that the few toursits here are mostly from Asia (korea, japan). There are really very few 'westerners', and i think a lot of those here are ex-pats!

Things of note:

the food, certainly cheap and certainly an intersting variety/mix. Most locals dont even know what most of the things they get served are! The best though is monkey brains. A live monkey is brought out, the ehad chopped off in front of you and then you crack the skull and suck out the brains. Fortunately I have not been witness to this yet, but its pretty common!

the size. I always though NYC, the US in general does things on grand scale, but nothing beats China. The skyscrapers, the buildings being built are all fantastic. I was shocked though that they are building a deep-sea containter port. Its going to be a man-made island (I think) around 30km off Shanghai, that they will then build a bridge from linking it to the mainland! the 3 metro lines here are up to 5 yrs old. they are building 9 more i think in the next 5-10 years! the whole of shanghai seems to be constantly under construction, adn spaghetti junction in B'ham is nothing compared to some of the junctions here. Finally how can the chinese build things, and get them finished quickly so that they work, whilst in the UK things take ages, are always delayed, cost more and tend to need redoing 2 days after the opening?

the traffic: something that every traveller in every country points out; here its a case of knowing that red means amber, that there is no such thing as 'right of way', 'speed limit' or limits to what a cyclist can carry on them, on their bike, on their trailer.

the 'lawai' dimension: meaning foreigner, i finally get what everyone else who has been outside fo EU/N. America gets with the hassling for money, dvds, watches etc. 'bu yau'(spelling?) is no! But I am a mean negotiator adn currently pay 30% of asking price (the askign price on the label, not jsut the one they tell me cause I am not chinese) for goods that I have bought. Interstingly its tough to communicate here as there are many, many people, even in their 20s who have had no exposure to english at all (don't even know 'hello', let alone 'please unlock my sim card, that's sim card, not pin number, and no please don't call the SOS number')

finally I wanted to say that I am living with a friend, through AIESEC UK, in a ratehr nice house, wtih a maid and driver; when her parents were here we visited a country club, a restaurant in the 56th floor of jin mao tower (apparently the tallest in Asia?), and a friend's penthouse appartment with his own cinema room, so its been nice. driver's cost about 100 pounds a month -bargain! even people from HK won't drive here! Maids are commonplace for anyone with a management job it seems.

So, a long introduction and some observations that may not be actually true, and might change by next week! its a fantastic city, and I cannot wait to get to Beijing in a day or two. I could go on, but I won't instead I'm off to the french quarter.

Adam

p.s.some great prices (13 RMB = 1 pound): 2 RMB for a single train ticket, 5-8 RMB for fake, good quality DVD, 25 RMB for a real DVD, 4-8 RMB for lunch, 3 RMB for a bottle of coke. Glad to leave London!!!