Shanghai Day 26 14/10/2014

The rain had stopped by the time we left Tokyo although it was still a bit windy and turbulent as we took off from Narita airport.  We missed out on an upgrade to first but did get moved to business class  which gave us a bit more leg room (although not really needed for Diane!).  As we got closer to China the volume of traffic in the ocean increased significantly giving a clear indication of the scale and importance of Shanghai's port and the gateway to the Yangzi river.  The plane had a camera on its nose with the images shown on the cabin screens.  Not sure either of us particularly liked seeing the runway speeding up towards us as we landed!  We headed into Shanghai on the shuttle bus.  The horizon was just a mass of sky rise buildings - I guess 23 million people need to live somewhere.  We'd decided to stay in an apartment for a few days thinking it would be good to have somewhere where we could just chill out and also get important things done like laundry.  At first it seemed real stark and quite isolated particularly after some of the small hostels we'd stayed in whilst in Japan.  It took a bit of time trying to track down somebody to check in with and then there was a lot of commotion with two Chinese girls who were clearly unhappy about something although the we'd got no idea what.  The apartment we were first given was tiny.  Simon complained in his best mandarin and we were moved to a much larger apartment with separate living and sleeping areas.  In the afternoon we headed out for a wander around Jing'an where we were staying.  The traffic is crazy.  Whatever the rules are for traffic lights was alien to us and trying to get across the road on a green man was life threatening.  If the bikes and mopeds didn't get you on the road they then tried on the pavement!  In lots of ways Shanghai is like any other big western city - on speed.  It's said that it typifies modern China and is unlike anywhere else in the country.  It's certainly very different to our experience of Beijing and it will be interesting to see how it compares to other cities that we're planning to visit.  Our apartment actually started to feel like our escape and it was good to get up to the 19th floor and shut out the noise and action from the streets below!