On January 7th we took a flight from Hanoi to Shanghai, and the first thing we did after arriving to Shanghai, was to visit airport McDonalds :) Damn, those cheeseburgers tasted incredibly good! We were happy to arrive finally to a big and modern city :)
Shanghai was indeed very impressive. It's a huge city, and as long as one can drive, huge skyscrapers and office buildings interchange with modern residential estates and older small town houses.
Somehow old China is mixed with a new one, and once you turn from the main pedestrian street - Nanjing Road, you face old China - small houses with tiny shops and Chinese red paper lanterns crossing the narrow streets.
We went to take a walk in the People's Park - a local alternative to New York's Central Park. It was crowded. As well as streets of Shanghai - with people of different age, couples, families with small kids, just walking around, shopping, dining in the local restaurants.
We also went up the Oriental Pearl - the tower which is currently third tallest in the world. Shanghai as seen from 350 meters is indeed impressive: buildings, offices and houses as far as you can see. Many are under construction - city is developing very fast.
Generally spirit of the city was very energetic and cheered up. The only thing that struck us both, were the censorship issues. Not only we were unable to access certain websites, and even this blog page, which is part of the google services. Wikipedia articles on censorship were blocked as well, so we asked our friend to email them to us. It's actually quite daunting what's going on over there. But probably majority of the people don't even think about issues of freedom of speech etc.
We take those things for granted here in liberal Europe. But once you encounter something else, you question how is it actually to live in a country knowing that big brother is watching you...
Taking a ride in People's Park
Symbol of Expo 2010 Shanghai - looks like a blue tooth :)
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