brb!

My opinion of the city hasn't changed much... There are places that were a lot of fun for us, galleries, cafés and very glitzy bars, but all of them were western in style and clientele. It's easy to meet westerners who live here, but none of those we talked to have close ties with locals.
Shanghai seems to me like two separate towns - on top there's a world-class resort for foreigners and the privileged, a place where expats commute to work by taxi; and then, there's another, more pedestrian town: smelly, dusty, not poor but far from wealthy, large, loud and part of a trist political and subsequently cultural reality.
I guess these opposites are blending together over time, and will do so more quickly with increasing wealth. I'm glad we're leaving.

We'll be in Vienna on Tuesday morning. How about beer at 9 pm at our usual spot?

In Japan we noticed how tourists would look at each other with ever so slight discomfort. Here it seems that they look at each other almost with relief, as if it were refreshing to make eye contact with someone and be sure they aren't out to scam you. Shanghai may be a great place for adventurers, but frankly, we've been travelling too long and we're too exhausted to put up with constantly being on the lookout.

(pic: Captain's Bar, roof-top bar with a great view of Pudong, belonging to a youth hostel)

My problem with Shanghai is that for a westerner, it's not a place to have fun, unless you stick to places that emulate a western lifestyle, at prices that are way beyond affordable for citizens. Leave these safety zones, and you find yourself in a gigantic, very smelly city, where people look at you and see an outsider with a large wallet. Walk down the large shopping streets and every ten meters someone tries to sell you fake goods or a beggar tugs at your sleeve. Walk outside these tourist centers and people constantly and very openly stare at you. And then there's also the very real danger of walking into a car (a green traffic light at best means that pedestrians too may cross the street).

The first thing we noticed about Shanghai was how much more it felt like the Tokyo we had imagined than Tokyo ever did. Driving into the city from the airport, you see fields of huge appartment blocks randomly sprouting in neighborhoods of small houses, quickly followed by the futuristic skyscrapers covered in blinking lights that mark your entrance to the city's center. Shanghai's houses are animated, and I'm not only referring to the 20-story video screen in Pudong - everywhere you look you see buildings with rainbow-colored dots and lines moving across their façades. It is a hugely impressive place, but then it's also tacky, and all the bling leaves you feeling like the urban planners' idea of a modern-looking city was largely inspired by theme parks.