Top 5 things I miss about Shanghai:
- Cheap transportation. Yes, for the most part you were taking your life into your own hands and had no guarantee that your driver wasn't going to fall asleep and crash you into the central reservation, but it was just so cheap!! And the subway – 30p a journey! As long as you could deal with feeling a sardine surrounded by irritating fellow sardines playing on their phones, it was fine.
- Lunch breaks. Actually taking an hour away from your desk and sitting and having a nice lunch with your colleagues.
- Sherpas. Restaurant food delivered to your house, along with booze! What’s not to love!?
- The lifestyle. Drinks after work, long weekend brunches, art, history, travel, having a cleaner, doormen, no responsibilities and everything is just easy and chilled out. I really miss that.
- Every bar having table service and no dress code. Flip flops, ripped jeans and someone taking your order without any bar loitering. Perfect!
Top 5 things I do not
miss about Shanghai:
- Taxi drivers. Annoying, rude, crazy people who felt the need to drive like a formula 1 driver and couldn’t stay in one lane for more than 2.5 seconds. And more often than not they would fall asleep on you on the way to the airport. Or try to scam you out of money. Or just point blank refuse to take you somewhere. Or all 3.
- No central heating. The bloody winter was freezing!
- Not being able to see the sky. When I first said I was going to Shanghai, a lot of people said to me ‘won’t the air bother you?’ and I hadn’t really thought about it. What I found was the bad air didn’t bother me as such, yes there were days where it gave you a headache and I couldn’t wear my lenses but generally it was fine. What bugged me more was not being able to see the sky and just living under this grey smog cloud for weeks on end. I think there was one point there early in the year that I didn’t see ‘sky’ for over 6 weeks. That’s depressing.
- Bureaucracy. Want to get some money out of the bank? Take your passport, work permit, residence permit, blood type, urine sample, second cousin’s next door neighbours date of birth, and your first born, and you might have a chance. Or maybe not.
- Internet!!!!!! I honestly didn’t realise how much I relied on the internet until I moved to China. No google, no gmail, no maps, no Facebook, no twitter, no YouTube, no Instgram, no BBC (depending on what they were reporting on this week), no Netflix! And everything being so heavily censored. And the feeling that if you stepped out of line, you’d be in serious trouble. I have tried to be as honest as possible about everything that happened to me in China, but there’s certain thoughts and opinions that I wouldn’t post up whilst I was still on that side of the firewall. I’m sure they’ll make their way onto this blog at some point – or maybe not if I actually want to go back someday…
- And one bonus one - the music scene. If you didn't like EDM or hardcore dance (I don't), you're kind of limited!
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