Meagan's World: Shanghai

Last weekend, I met Matt and some of our friends from Hong Kong in Shanghai. We were celebrating Kelly and Mel's birthdays, both of which are in the beginning of December. Kelly and Raul had told me how much they loved Shanghai, but I didn't really think much about it....It turns out they were right! It was the most beautiful, dynamic city I have seen in a long time. In fact, it is my favorite city in all of Asia! It has the best aspects of Beijing and Hong Kong combined into one city: there is a definite downtown area, with tall sky scrapers, and everythng is close together so taxi rides are never too long (unlike Beijing). The streets are lined with those big beautiful trees that arch over the road, and there are a ton of gorgeous, old buildings. You can definitely see the French influence on Shanghai, with old manor-style buildings and black wrought iron balconies and gates. The food was extremely good, and not too oily (like it is in Beijing). The clubs and bars are much more sophisticated than in Beijing, and the expats are younger than the ones in Hong Kong but cooler than the ones in Beijing. The prices are much easier to handle than those in Hong Kong, even at very nice bars and restaurants. Also, Shanghai is near the ocean, and somehow there is something much nicer about living close to a large body of water. Beijing is very far from the ocean and it can feel sort of closed in and stifling. I loved it in Shanghai! I would love to live in Shanghai one day. The only problem is, they speak a dialect of Chinese called Shanghainese, and it was very difficult for me to understand them even when they were speaking Mandarin.

Altogether there were 8 of us there: Kelly and Raul, Kelly's sister, Mel and John, Torry and Patrick, Payal, and Matt and I. We were staying in a gorgeous hotel right on the Bund. I felt like I was in heaven! Maybe I loved the hotel so much because I had just come from Beijing...in the hotel, the shower always had hot water, the room was warm and there was always electricity! In my apartment in Beijing, none of those things is guaranteed. Matt and I ordered room service for breakfast on Saturday and it was so delicious. They actually knew how to make Western food! I just had 2 fried eggs, sausage and toast, but it was the best breakfast that I can remember having since I went to visit Uncle Andrew in Minneapolis. On Friday night we went to a club called Bar Rouge, which was a lot of fun, despite the very blatant presence of many Chinese prostitutes. Here, the prostitutes were much more savvy and sophisticated than the ones in either Hong Kong or Beijing. They dressed much nicer than any of us and were not overly obvious about being working girls. It was very disturbing, actually. They weren't very nice. On Saturday we went shopping and out to a big lunch and dinner, then on Sunday we had a delicious brunch. Way too much eating in one weekend! We went to the antique market and the fabric market. I treated myself to white cashmere coat. (At least they told me it was cashmere. Well, it was cheap even if it wasn't real.) It was one of those weekends where I felt extremely happy the whole time. It made me very excited to go back to Hong Kong to be with Matt and all my friends!

Meagan in Shanghai