I went to Pudong today, which is the place with all those big buildings that you’re familiar with if you’ve ever seen a picture of the Shanghai skyline. It was kind of boring. Extremely empty, despite being a Sunday afternoon. I get the feeling that no one actually lives there.
I guess it was interesting how little it felt like, say Manhattan, or the Chicago loop. Much less density of buildings, but every single building is massive. I knew the Shanghai Tower was going to be tall, but I didn’t realize how big its floor plan was. From the outside it kind of reminded me of the Thompson Center in Chicago, with how the inner construction is very visible. I didn’t actually go inside, though I guess at some point I will have to do the touristy thing of ascending to the observation deck and looking down upon all the tiny people below me.
I then took the subway to a place called Aegean Sea, which was more along the lines of what I was hoping to find in Pudong: A massive 8 floor mall filled with consumeristic excess. It had all the varieties of cafe you could hope for: maid cafe, cat cafe, waiters wearing frog costumes cafe, etc. Lots of claw machines and gacha machines. The third floor was the toddler floor, so they were all running around, driving miniature cars, swimming in ball pits, roller skating, etc. It was the first time in quite awhile that I wished I were 3 again.
The reason I went to Aegean Sea specifically was that I’d hoped the bookstore would be really big. It definitely wasn’t small – it took up about half of the mall’s 7th floor – but unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of five floor massive bookstore I’d encountered in Beijing.
I always have this strange desire to go to malls, but once I’m actually at one I just feel like a weirdo walking around aimlessly. I never actually feel like I can go into any of the stores (with bookstores being the one exception). I didn’t even eat anything there. I just walked around for an hour and went home. Oh well.
They seemed to have phased out 1 yuan bills since I was last in China. Now it’s all 1 yuan coins. I still don’t have a bank card yet (though I applied for one on Friday), so I have to use cash everywhere, which is increasingly inconvenient.
I guess my Chinese is significantly better than last time, since I was able to answer all the various barrages of questions necessary to set up a phone plan and apply for a bank account without anyone attempting to use English with me – but I suppose that makes me all the more conscious of how limited my ability to express myself is. I think last time I just felt happy anytime something resembling communication successfully occurred in Chinese. This time, well… there is just all this tiny stuff that comes up in daily interactions with strangers that you don’t get much practice with if most of your exposure to the language is via books, podcasts and talking to people you already know extremely well. It’s stuff that I understand when I hear it, but when it comes to expressing it myself, I end up using weird overly long alternative phrases that while understandable to others, are definitely not what any actual Chinese person would say.
Next on the agenda is convincing someone to do karaoke with me (or KTV, as it’s called here). We’ll see how that goes.
