Thursday, December 31, 2009

Did You Know...

I originally thought of naming this blog "A Tramp Abroad." But I wasn't sure if people would get it.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Images of a Shanghai Market

A bustling market:
All kinds of different crazy meats. Chicken feet and heads are common all throughout China
Cured meats hanging all over this alcove:
More of the dried meats:
And finally, the piece de resistance, the pig face in a bag:




Shanghai

I started writing about Shanghai right after I put up my last entry vowing to get my thoughts down about the China trip. Unfortunately life has a way of taking control of your plans sometimes and I found myself attending to more important things. Our family friend who has been battling lymphoma took a turn for the worst over the past few weeks and eventually died a couple of days ago. Lucky for me the universe aligned and sent me my best friend up for an unexpected visit right when it happened, which gave us a lot of strength and something to keep our minds off of this terrrble loss. Today I finally got a chance to take a look at the little bit I had written about Shanghai and decided to post it. I'll do my best to get some more up soon.

When I used to imagine what Shanghai was like, I always had this 1920s image in my mind. I imagined art deco façades with an Asian flair; wealthy colonizing elites having their Asian adventure in posh clubs. I’d always imagined it as one of those world cities – a crossroads where cultures came together.

In many ways, the place I had imagined was there. During our trip, we found that Shanghai was in fact the most Western of the cities we visited and home to a plethora of global corporations and businesses. In its recent history, Shanghai had been broken apart into districts by its colonizers – the French, the British and the Americans. The most famous of these is the former French Concession, an area that still causes the Chinese to lose ‘face’ when discussed. It was an area the French had controlled and is characterized by the strong French architectural influence but, like everything in China, is slowly being overtaken by time, development and change – that ubiquitous lady busy defining modern China.

The thing that seems to stay the same in this city - and define it, really - is that indescribable global flavor of a big city. It’s that posh thing about Shanghai that you can’t quite put your finger on, the thing that makes you know you’re somewhere special. No surprise here, I liked it. It was the kind of place I could wrap my head around. But I guess that's to be expected from a city girl at heart.