Another Day in Shanghai
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2005
1
7
20
Trip End
Jan 15, 2006
Shanghai,
China
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
After 2 days in Shanghai, we've learned to time our sightseeing trips around the rush hours. Today was such a day as we stayed in the hotel until 3pm.
Dongtai Market/Antiques
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This region is full of old school vendors selling replica antiques (which are all probably made in the same factory)
New World Area 1
. I guess the success of the vendor then depends on how hard they sell. As a result some of the vendors are quite pushy & often the quoted price drops by at least 50% if you start walking away. I think these vendors are what the books talk about when they refer to the "floating population" in Shanghai.Across the street from the antique market is the animal market. Now I can see why SARS is a problem in the rural areas of China. In a small area of ~100 sqft, there are countless vendors selling live animas. Birds, cats, dogs, fish, large fighting crickets, maggots, basically everything you can think of. They are all crammed into a small area & it is extremely dirty. The ground is constantly wet from vendors hosing animal excrement. People are sitting around, handling pets while eating at the same time. Mind you this is only a small hidden alleyway in modern Shanghai. I can imagine large markets like these in rural ghettos. These must be hotspots for diseases such as SARS since animals and humans are crammed into small, dirty, dense areas. At least in Shanghai they don't eat these animals. I'm betting the poor hygiene& cooking greatly increases the probability of species jumping diseases.
One might say, "well why doesn't the government simply ban these activities?" From the looks of things there are a couple of social political reasons why I think they cannot do this:
1
New World Area 2
. China is only communist politically and capitalist economically. The party of the proletariat is now the party of the industrialist. These politically incompatible policies then can only co-exist through loop-holes and officials keeping "blind eyes" to certain issues & circumstances.2. The party of the "people" no longer champions many of the Poor's concerns. Moreover the faction in control of the CCP is Jiangzheming's Shanghai faction. If Shanghai is any indication, the most important issue is modernization. However this neglects the poor. I'm guessing that the policymakers do not want to antagonize the poor by legislating against their only livelihood in these dirty markets.
3. Many of these people are poorly educated middle to elderly aged. There isn't much you can do w/these people as it is much too late to change their lives. These are the forgotten people who have fallen through the cracks of modernization. Because of the sheer number of these people, it is probably better to let them be than to antagonize them to the point of instability. Just look at the French riots last November with the downtrodden immigrants.
Evening
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We ended the evening in the bar district of the French Concession. This was the Judy's Too, Manhattan, Blue Frog area. They were all pretty terrible. Basically all kids with some probably on drugs. We ended up hanging out at M-bar. It was a 1015-esque place with a ton of local kids. I wonder what they do or "study" because it was a Monday night and the people were drinking like fish
New World Area 3
. Bottles and bottles of Jack Daniels, Absolut etc. I know the price was kind of high for the local kids (probably all in the 18-24 y.o. range) so I wonder what the story was with them.Long story short this area was not in my demographics and we left after a short while. We ended up at the People 6 bar. People 7 was better. In the People 6 bar, all I saw were young local girls w/older business men. Lots of escorts I take it. Every business man here has a young female companion. It's discrete but blatantly obvious if you look carefully, especially when you have an ugly, unstylish, fat old guy with a young (and very hot) chick. I highly doubt that its physical attraction as you can see that these girls look really bored or are sighing deeply whenever the guy leaves for the bathroom. I guess is this the product of wealth discrepancy...
