AMP Treatise

I've noticed lots of peculiarities in China but by the time I get back and remember to write them down, I've mostly forgotten them. So Friday night, when I went out I took a small notepad and pen so that I could actually remember them. So far, I don't think what I've written has really shown how strange it can be here sometimes so hopefully these note will somewhat remedy that.

In the taxi coming from pudong (literally West of the River and Puxi, East of the River and the far older and more traditional Shanghai), along the highway, you can see the Pearl Orient Tower and other pudong buildings and tonight, the clouds where just about at the level of the top of the Jian Mao tower. There is so much light coming from Puxi and that area of Pudong that the clouds literally look white as day.

As opposed to NYC, lots of people will sit in the front seat of the taxi when they're by themselves. I think this is because taxi drivers love to talk to people and riders just find this easier to do from the front. We try to talk to the drivers but usually they do more laughing at us than talking so it can be a fruitless endeavor. Actually, I find this a lot. When ever I throw out some Chinese (or Putonghua, the common language) people always laugh. One girl told me I have a "cute accent." How I can even have an accent with my vocabulary of 100 words baffles me.

The Nanpu Bridge rocks! You can see it some of my pictures that I'll post up but the most interesting part is the "off ramp." When the bridge reaches the Puxi side of the river, it is quite high up and instead of making a long gradual slope down to the ground, since space is at a premium in that area, it corkscrews down. Someone described it is as "feels like you're being flushed down a toilet. " You can go down three full revolutions. It really is cool. And the view from it is awesome, too.

Cab interiors are a little strange. Once you've released your death grip on the handles and managed to relax from all the close calls and frantic and chaotic driving you start to notice the oddities. First, many cabs have a little message saying welcome to the cab, etc., in Chinese and English. What's funny is they tell you to put your seatbelt on, but when you look over, you find that it has been embedded a good six inches behind the seat and no amount of pulling will free it. These were definitely not intended to be used. They are this way, I think, because all the seats have this white fitted seat covering and in the process of installing it they just jam them back there. Oh, and "drunks and schizophrenics may not travel alone and must be accompanied by someone else." I would really like to hear the story that lead to them putting this message in the cabs. Finally, the driver sits in this plexiglass shell barrier. And all the taxis are VW Santanas, very similar to the VW Fox the US used to have. But we did get a Mercedes Benz E-class the other day, THAT was nice.

They have TVs in the buses! Which, by the way, always seem to be crammed with 40 more people than they were designed to take.

In the cab, I noticed an electronic decibel meter on the side of the street. I assume this is supposed to make people conscious of the noise level and try and reduce it. However, the result is that everyone honks in order to see how high it will go. At the time, it was 71db.

The Chinese LOVE watermelon here. They sell it everywhere and our fridge downstairs is always full of them.