Shanghai

I've just arrived in Shanghai after being nearly kindapped by over-zealous hotel employees at the airport in Beijing who couldn't speak a word of English. It's my first time in China and I am impressed, awed, and awfully confused. I've discovered life in Shanghai sort of resembles life in the rainforest--at the ground, on the street level, there is one form of life--that of dingy shops, dirty streets, bicycles and hordes of people. As you move up vertically, everything becomes more glitzy and glamorous. First come the massive, multi-lane highways that criss-cross like vines and sweep across the sky over the city streets. Above this level, comes the most advanced system of life in the ecosystem--the collassal, ultra-modern skyscrapers that dominate the city's skyline. Shanghai, and China as a whole, straddles a very strange position in the world. Somewhere in between first and third worlds (landing somewhere like 2.1, if we can make such gradations) and full of contradictions. I have never seen such a visible clash of wealth and poverty, tradition and modernity, city and country, business and state. And being a Westerner on the street is endlessly fun: it's the only place I've ever been where being stared at in the street comes not from contempt, but from benign curioisity and interest. It's one of the few places where being American still brings you a somewhat privileged tourist status.
(Photos mine).