People's Capitalist Monachy of Republican China - Part 8 - Farewell Shanghai - Day 6

A crack of dawn start for the two of us - as we had 9am train tickets to Nanjing...

Finally! Hot water... Our Ting Tong hotel had been a bit lacking in terms of pressure and hot water. All of our other showers have been tepid and weak in terms of pressure... Today - it was hot and weak in terms of pressure (1 out of 2 ain't bad)... Must be because we are up at the crack of dawn instead of fluffing about watching crap TV in bed...

We decided not to risk the mosh pit that is "People's Square Metro Station" in peak hour - so we called for a taxi... It was only 16 RMB for a 15 min trip to the Shanghai Central Station (about AUD$2.60)... Yeah baby yeah...

The Shanghai station is huge, busy and somewhat chaotic whilst being very ordered (if that makes any sense)... All passengers need to wait in a "holding area" before their train is announced - then they all move downstairs to the actual platforms (sort of like an airport) - but the chaotic element comes from the huge number of people who arrive late for their trains. The train before ours had about 100 people running at full speed to the check in area - whilst this woman dressed up like a SS Officer was screaming at them all in Chinese (probably threating to close the gate or something)... It was fairly amusing.

For breakfast - we both had a few stale trainstation crossiants and stuff. What is it with Shanghai and stale crossiants...?!

So to sum up Shanghai. It is a very ecletic Asian city (feels like a fusion of heaps of places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Hanoi and Tokyo) and it is changing rapidly. There is so much construction going on - it makes Australia look downright pathetic (especially if there is more office construction in Canberra than Sydney at the moment)... Shanghai is also interestingly becoming a stop-over destination for people travelling from Australia to the States or Europe. It is increasingly becoming very modern and there seems to be a large ex-pat community here (as Shanghai is the financial hub of China).

One thing that both Ant and I fail to understand is why Christmas is so big here?? Shanghaians (or shangians) are the biggest x-mas freaks I have ever seen - santa is everywhere, carols are everywhere - I think they understand the true spirit of christmas - retail...

Another odd thing is that there has been a complete void of internet cafes in Shanghai. According to our not so trusty guidebook - DK - internet cafes are supposed to be plentiful in China - but we couldn't find anything to save our lives (hence this is all a few days old)... Damn DK - damn you to hell....! Aggghhh