A married Manchester lad living in Shanghai

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A Manchester (U.K) lad living in Shanghai with his Shanghai inlaws.

I guess to everyone who has and hasn't been to Shaghai Shanghai will appear to be modern metropolis and yes it is the face of modern mainland China. And is without a doubt a city of wealth, vibrance and mystery it is also the gateway to the land of opportunity and culture shocks. Above all Shanghai is a city of contrasts: Modern yet Ancient, Bright Lights Beam but don't penetrate the Dark Alleys. Futuristic yet Backwards, Obscene Wealth faces Abject Poverty every day.

And to many Shanghai is the 'Paris of the East', 'the Pearl of the Orient', 'the Whore of Asia' - in the first half of the 20th century, Shanghai was the playground for a globe-trotting elite. But after the Second World War and China's Revolution, Shanghai's glory faded, and it became a city stored in mothballs, dusty and preserved. But no longer. Shanghai has burst open it's red doors upon the world stage, looking to reclaim its place as a World City and is without doubt one of the world's most ambitious challenging cities, all the while attracting streams of new visitors to get into the dumbfounded queue.

Living in Shanghai can be exciting for the newcomers and yet quite boring for some of the expats.

When i first came here on April 1 2005 I was completely enthralled by the huge scale of this city, compared to cold and rainy Manchester it was vast, loud and always busy.

After the rigmarole of getting to my hotel with a big coat and lots of luggage i was quite impressed by how easy it was taking the Maglev speed train and then getting a resonably priced taxi ride to my hotel and in a very resonable time considering the volume of traffic and time of day.

I was staying in a small cleanish 120RMB (7 quid) a night 2 star hotel just off the bund which unfortunately for my personal memories has now been razed. I would often leave my hotel in the morning and walk around looking like a complete twit of a sweaty white complaining 'it's too F*****g hot' foreigner with my stereotyped image of a rucksack with my passport and MP3 inside, all my money about £200 and a North face cagoule.

For my first three days there I didn't really have any care about anything I was safe and healthy and I was totally gobsmacked of where I was and the things I would see after such a small time, and selfishly didn't call home as quickly as I could have done.

So I would just walk around anywhere nowhere in particular to go, just walk and see where i ended up, absorbing the smells, noises, language and something that hit me very quickly apart from the heat was the amount of people that just seemed to be everywhere doing things, and of course for the many interested Chinese that hadn't seen a 'Lao Wei' (foreigner) before the odd stare and 'hallooo' came my way.


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