Shanghai —2 8 March 2 : Something New. I arrived back in Shanghai in early January. Daytime temperatures were down around freezing, night-time temperatures dipped lower. My life as a "refugee" was not quite over. I picked it because its location was ideal for finding an apartment in the Old Chinese City, where I had lived before. It had been four months since I had left Shanghai, largely because of a visa problem.
The first thing I noticed heading south on Sichuan, then west on Fangbang to the Bank of China, was that the pace of construction had not abated. As before, I found myself stepping over broken concrete where sidewalks were being replaced and skirting piles of construction materials and staring up at the scaffolding on buildings that were either rising out of nothing or being remodeled or given a face-lift.
I also witnessed the usual bad manners that I think no amount of pep talks by Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng is going to remedy for Expo. Among other things, he was promoting a "you first" policy, the idea being that if you and someone else arrived at the same gate or ticket counter or whatever, you let the other person go first.
Not on your life in Shanghai. I also heard the loud clearing of throats followed by the spitting up of huge mouthfuls of phlegm.
This habit the mayor does not bring up in his pep talks, believing it to be—and I think he is right—incurable. But I am not critical. It was nice to be back in Shanghai, and the raspy sound of a throat being cleared told me that I was. That is the only way to move money between the two accounts. The United States government won't allow direct deposits to a Chinese bank. The Chinese government reciprocates the inconvenience in the other direction. But it was slow going today because a guy was throwing a fit at the only open teller window.
