Shanghaiied

Today is my second last day in Shanghai. Tomorrow I fly out to Beijing. I'm feeling vaguely confident now that I know what to look for, and I've learnt a couple more words. His Hotness Prince Daryl of Birmingham says the Leo Hostel, just off Tiananmen Square, is the bomb.

Shanghai has been good to me, despite some difficulties. Considering how disorganised I am, I should be huddled in a corner, rocking myself to sleep. That's not to say it's been all plain sailing. One of the most frustrating thing for me has been not being able to come to grips with the bus system, which has resulted in me walking everywhere in between the train and metro stations. Shanghai is fucking huge, and the distances between streets have made exploring this place a daily battle. Just imagine the area of Sydney bounded by Paddington and Glebe, stretched to fill the entire Sydney metropolitan area. You can drive for more than an hour before you get out of downtown Shanghai.

In practical terms, this meant that last night, when I was trying to find a decent place to drink and meet people, I almost gave up on several occasions. I would walk for half an hour, pull out my incredibly large and obtrusive map, walk for another 20 minutes, get lost, find the place I was looking for, and then realise it sucked. And on top of that, there were frequent stretches along the way infested with beggars, street sellers and hustlers all trying to get money out of me. It was only the overriding desire for some decent human company that kept me going.

I spent 3 hours wandering the area known as the French Concession, where most of the bars and clubs are. There are a shitload of them. The problem is , on a Thursday night, they're either empty or tacky or depressing or hip hop. I know, I was probably judging them unfairly, but everytime I thought I'd give a crappy looking bar a go, I was proven right.

Right at the end of my night, when hope was almost extinguished, I was walking towards the California Bar, on the fringes of Fuxing Park. If it was as bad as I expected, I was going to go home.

I saw the mother and her three year old daughter sitting on the curb, and I saw the Yuan signs in their eyes as I approached in my swanky western clothes. My heart sunk, for the five hundredth time, as I prepared to ignore them. The little girl ran towards me and said "Hello, hello, money, money!" very excitedly, smiling. Up to this point, I had followed quite rigidly the advice given by Inge, a German friend I made at the Captain Hostel on my second day. She warned me against giving money to beggars, and to be especially wary of children and old people, because they had guilt on their side. I had coldly refused countless old people shaking their cups at me, stared past those with stumps for limbs, and shook my head vigorously at pretty girls selling all manner of handmade things. But for some reason, this little girl, and her poor mother, made me pull out my wallet and give her a handful of coins. She and her mother said thankyou many times. I was about to walk away but instead I turned and pulled out my camera. The mother nodded and held her daughter close for the photo.

On the way home in the taxi, for the first time in a year, I cried silently. The cold, hard, angry shell I'd built against this city finally cracked. I cried for the poverty stricken, freezing away their hope on the streets, for those living in tiny decrepit apartments, jostling in the tide of traffic on their flimsy bicycles, breathing in the shitty smog-filled air, just working and working so hard to try and make a life for their families and themselves.

I cried for me, because I couldn't talk to these people, and because up until that point I hadn't really wanted to. I wanted to have a holiday, goddam it. I wanted to party. I didn't want to embrace the whole culture, just the nice, clean, westernised bits.