Long march

I woke up this morning and for the first time couldn't be bothered being in China. It's really only because I had a tantrum-inducing never-ending metro journey home last night, when my feet were already sore from a couple hours of exploring the streets around my office. Let's just say it was partly my fault, partly Shanghai's. At a metro station halfway home I could not for the life of me find the connection to the next metro line, so took a metro back where I'd started from, glowering at the metro map which I decided was a LIAR, all the while being stared at by a middle-aged Chinese man with long fingernails who was probably wondering why the laowai (foreigner) was so grumpy. Then I may have taken the next metro in the wrong direction, which didn't brighten my evening. Anyway, five metros and an hour and a half after leaving the office I arrived back at my hostel, three kilometres away. And went to bed in a sulk.

But in a few hours I'll put on more comfortable shoes, get back on the metro, and it'll be fun again.

So I started work yesterday, here's my building - my newsroom is on the 38th floor:

It was a hot, hot morning, I arrived at the office sweaty and unglamorous. Over the day the smog/rainclouds closed in, so the high-rises for miles around disappeared, one by one. Surprisingly, I don't notice the smog as something horrible to breathe, the air smells different to New Zealand but doesn't feel dirty. Here's a photo from the office, to be fair taken through a dirty window, but you can still see the smog:

I have no idea how far back the high-rises stretch - miles, I'd guess. But on the ground around my office, the Jing'an neighbourhood, it doesn't feel like you're in a metropolis. There are old-style brick Chinese houses, only two or three stories high, which have mostly been knocked down in the rest of the city. There are also gardens and men selling dumplings on the street, and lots of little restaurants and clothes boutiques.. which I didn't take photos of. But here's a photo of where I had lunch:

A little restaurant in an alleyway off Weihai Road, the "media" street my office is on. I had walked past fancier places but they were so packed, I couldn't face going in. At this place I just asked for rice and they loaded it up with lots of yum vegetables and mystery meats. I had a real "oh my god I'm in China" moment here, it was nice. However, I've been banned going back by my Chinese friend Lydia, who says this kind of place is dirty. Oh well.

Work itself was okay, everybody's really nice but I don't have much to do yet. The editors are keen for me to connect with the expat community, which the mostly Chinese newspaper staff doesn't have a strong bond with. However, as Rachel Hunter might say, that won't happen overnight. It's quite good then, that next week is a national holiday, Golden Week - the office is mostly closed and I'll have a chance to connect with some laowais.

The lovely Lydia, who is a business reporter at the Shanghai Daily, took me out to dinner for a Shanghai specialty, fried dumplings with a meatball and lots of delicious juice inside them. They were the best thing I've tasted here so far, although quite perilous to eat. They're so yummy and popular, there was a line outside the door and people bagsing our table while we were halfway through dinner.

My dumplings and curry soup. That isn't Lydia, she wouldn't let me take a picture of her, it's some random lady across the table from us.

The dumplings being made.

After dinner we wandered along Nanjing Road West, the second-swankiest shopping street in Shanghai, lined with giant department stores and fancy western luxury shops like Bally, Loewe, and, er, Marks and Spencer. Back in Shanghai's 1920s heyday Nanjing Road was called Bubbling Well Road, and was lined with the mansions of obscenely rich Europeans and their equally obscenely rich Chinese business partners. I'll go back with my camera soon and find some remaining mansions from this time.

Bonus photo: a stuffed toy shop stuffed with stuffed toys near the office that made me laugh.