上海 SHANGHAI
Tuesday 10 November 2015
It seems silly to travel six thousand miles just to sit in a dowdy hotel room with terrible lighting all day. But there it is. Most of Tuesday was spent sitting in a dowdy hotel room with terrible lighting, puling together the pieces of research that will go into producing “China 1908.”
Happily, two brief adventures were enjoyed: in the morning, it was necessary to take a trip to the Apple Store, where hundreds of people were jam-packed on all six ( I think it is six) stories of the Apple sales and support rooms. I now have three different explanations of how to set up my brand new I Phone for use in foreign countries. If my Verizon bill is horrendous, I will know they were all wrong.
The second adventure took the form of a search for a print out and a trip to a tiny hole-in-the-wall shop with concrete floor and three standard printing-xerox machines that took up most of the space. The rest of the space was claimed by a cheery young mother with a pony tail and two adorable toddlers, who were running through her legs.
The tiniest shops are full of stuff. It spills out over the walls and on to the sidewalks. Everywhere, people are moving and unpacking boxes of who-knows what. Because things are so crowded and squeezed in together, you are especially conscious of so much stuff.
The streets do not appear especially clean, for everywhere small and large construction jobs are under way, though you see little litter. Perhaps it is just to create jobs, but all day long on many of the sidewalks are women and men in oversized jumpsuits with strange brooms sweeping up a leaf or a twig. No air blowers here.
