Yes, It's Still Hot, but This Ain't About That.

One thing I forgot to say about the flight over here was that I was kind of looking forward to getting lasered in the head. See, when you arrive at the Pudong (Shanghai) airport, they don't let you off the plane before a few folks in biohazard suits come in and take your temperature via a laser to the head. Sounds great, right? Well, maybe since my flight came from Japan and Japanese people aren't nearly as dangerous as we dirty dirty pig-sty-swilling Americans, or maybe just because the biohazard suit dudes were tired or on break, no one lasered me in the head. They announced that we were to be boarded and that we should stay in our seats, but as soon as the plane docked up, everyone stood up and headed out. Disappointing, I know.

And as a side note, haven't we all come to realize that H1N1 is really no worse than the regular flu we get every single season? Don't we now know that one of the reasons it spread so well is that it's just like the regular flu. So can we just get over it already? I mean, sure it's nice to use this as an excuse to practice our pandemic preparedness, but sheesh.

So yesterday was another comedy or errors. The task was to get a few books at the giant Book City downtown. As usual, I figured I'd just mosey over there and not worry about maps or trying to figure out exactly where it was, and if I get lost, then I get lost. I got lost. A few times. As much as I really love getting lost (and I do - no joke), because of all the construction, it's really hard to enjoy the detours. Lots of buildings coming down and going up. A mess, but it'll be very interesting to see what the place looks like for the Expo.

It's a bit odd. In some ways I'm not as hurt about all the demolition here as I am/was about Beijing. In Beijing, I had a decent understanding of the history of the city, and I knew better what was coming down. Also, I really don't like the way they build bad look-alikes of old buildings. In Shanghai somehow it doesn't bother me as much. Maybe that will change as I learn more about the city, but it seems that Shanghai has always been a consciously and continually created city. It's another one of those swamp-cities that was raised from the mud only very recently. Perhaps that's why I don't feel such a sense of permanence as I did in Beijing. Then again, I've only been here a couple of days :)

This had gotten a bit long, so I'll leave off talking about the bookstore and some other things (went to see Harry Potter, I did) until next time. Oh, and as an aside, I don't want to jinx anything, but there are ways to hop over the Great Firewall of China ;)

It's going to take me a while to get back into taking pictures again, but I'm trying. I've decided to start using my public Smugmug account for the photos of this trip, so if you are inclined, those photos will be here:
http://fascha.smugmug.com/gallery/8947410_TxaMg/1/594345347_vSJLL#594345347_vSJLL

And here's another sample of that joy: