Nick's Jog Blog: Shanghai shufflin'

On the 3^rd January we arrived at the biggest city in China…Shanghai. With nearly 24 million people, it has the same population as all of Australia. It was a bit of a step up from our Canadian home town of Clinton, Ontario, (with a whopping population of 3000) to say the least.

China is great. But holy heck is it different. Prior to landing, the first image I conjure up when I see the word China, is of Chinese food and Jackie Chan movies. Now, I have some more images…my first impression is that everyone in China spits. In the streets, in the train stations, inside buildings. Why is this necessary? And not just a little innocent bit of saliva but hacking a full on loogie. It’s like in Aussie Rules if you don’t bounce the ball every 15 metres you get pulled up, but substitute it for spitting! But luckily we stayed for four nights and gave us enough time to form a nicer opinion of China as a whole.

We took in the tried and tested touristy sights, such as Yuyuan Garden, Town Temple of the Gods, the scenic Bund overlooking the futuristic skyline of Pudong, an acrobatics show, and even went out to a pretty neat little ancient water town called Qibao, which is known as the Venice of Shanghai (although the only comparison is that they are both kind of smelly).

We even took in a bit of shopping, with Michelle on a mad hunt to find a tea pot from specifically from China. I pointed out that probably every tea pot she's ever drank from would have been made in China (isn't everything?), but I was missing the point apparently.

Here’s what I learned while in China:

-Coughing and sneezing all over everyone and spitting in public is perfectly normal…get involved.

-Street signs, and pedestrian lights mean absolutely nothing. And not because they are in a different script. I mean, nobody pays attention to them. The “green man” that means “walk” in Australia means “sure you can walk, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t vehicles that are going to fly past you with no regard” in China. If your vehicle is small enough to drive it on the sidewalk…why should it be limited only to pedestrians anyway?

-Little kids farting in public and giggling about it is funny no matter what country you’re in

-On weekends, crowds of enthusiastic parents flock to the central park (People’s Square) and set up a virtual “market” which have signs and pictures of their child in the hopes of setting up an arranged marriage (presumably with the child of another eager parent who is at the park). The information will contain their age, occupation, interests, even what kind car they drive. I’m sure glad that isn’t how it goes in Australia-I would have had slim pickings when it was my age to get an arranged marriage, driving around in a beaten up 92’ Lancer.

-China has banned Facebook. Seriously. And Youtube, and Twitter, and BlogSpot (hence why I couldn't blog about this when I was actually in China) and many other popular websites-they are literally inaccessible. Apparently they think it is detrimental to their society. I think they have bigger things to worry about (pollution, the North Koreans, losing their number 1 table tennis world ranking), but to be honest it was quite refreshing! Either way, I find it odd you can still access porn but not Facebook in China (ahhhh so I've been told that is-I never tested that theory, promise!)

I managed to get out and about for two runs while in Shanghai, and enjoyed them both. Although it is beautiful in its own way, it could quite possibly be the worst city to run in. Because…

-The air pollution is terrible

-There are people literally EVERYWHERE, and despite best dodging efforts you are destined for a collision sooner or later

-The buildings are so tall the Garmin absolutely shits itself and shows your location as somewhere completely different (so does Google Maps and everything else for that matter)

-You cannot drink the tap water so if I didn’t have a bottle of water on hand for before or after the run (which I generally didn’t) I’d just have to cop it sweet until I went back out again.

-As mentioned before, it is just as easy to get yourself run over when obeying the law than making up your own road rules.

The first run was a short 6.7km zip around the city, passing through People’s Square (I thought I might as well see what kind of market value I could get in the arranged marriage stakes). After getting lost in a series of underground pedestrian walkways and losing satellite reception, I headed east along Nanjing Rd. Nanjing Rd is “pedestrian only” road (and I use that term very loosely) with it’s bright lights, shops, restaurants and street vendors-it’s like Shanghai’s version of Las Vegas’ strip, complete with seedy guys handing out flyers trying to sell a “massssaaaagggeeee???”

At the end of Nanjing Rd is the Huangpu river ~~which, judging by the name is where Chinese go to hang a poo~~ and the esplanade is known as the Bund, with great views of Shanghai’s skyline. It is here where you get your typical “I’m in Shanghai” kind of photo, or presumably dump all your rubbish in the river by the looks of things.

Negotiating the back roads returning to our hotel, I noticed the shops turned from selling touristy trinkets and western food, to selling mechanical parts in nearly every single shop. But since I was already doing a bolt and had two nuts, I kept on running, even passed the nice smelling food carts of the back roads and got back on the “tourist trail” of Nanjing Rd, where my run ended, and I had to find some bottled water.

My second run in Shanghai, two days later was fairly similar, although with a bit of drizzle around, everyone had their umbrellas out (and the vendors who were selling junky toy helicopters and rollerblades suddenly had tons of umbrellas to sell, being the entrepreneurs they are). This made the already crowded footpaths even more crowded, and even when people lifted their umbrella to dodge the running white man, I was still generally had to duck, as they couldn’t lift them high enough.

Getting a couple of sneaky runs in in a country where a lot of the food is deep fried (although somehow everyone is still as skinny as an Olsen twin) feels good, as you feel like you’ve “earned” the rubbish food you’re likely to eat…this couldn’t be more true in China. The food options were pretty glorious, even if I had to point to the menu, or mime a chicken in order to get the right food.

I learnt a lot in China, and even if the image of spitting in the streets stays with me, so will the thoughts of being warmly welcomed, having some great food and getting involved in a totally different and unique culture. Although I was looking forward to chomping into a dirty meat pie in Australia, which was just a ten hour flight away.