Of Course There's a Difference

Do you see this picture? Cute how JAL (Japan Airlines) differentiates wheelchair users between those flying Economy and those flying First/Business Class.

The Grass is Always Greener . . .

Some Americans and Europeans prefer to say their vows in Bali, in Phuket, or in Kyoto, so why not the Japanese bride and groom ditching their shrines and temples in favor of the churches in the West? An article by Doreen Carvajal (read it HERE) in the International Herald Tribune talks about the phenomenon of these fantasy weddings in Paris. Especially now that the whole world has seen the weddings of Cruise-Holmes (in a castle in Italy) and Longoria-Parker (in a chateau in France), some would like to realize the same dream of doing it abroad.

Even here in Tokyo, during one of my strolls in Omotesando back roads and small alleys, I ran across a huge church with disproportional front yard. At first I really thought it was a worship church, but upon closer inspection, I realized it was a church solely used for the purpose of wedding ceremonies. These ceremonies came in packages, like any wedding ceremonies, but this one caters to those who want the ultimate western wedding experience.

Not too far from this church, on Omotesando-dori itself, stood L'Anniversaire, a multi-story store that catered exclusively to weddings, with each floor focusing on one aspect of the wedding: jewelries, bridal gowns, make-up, and topped with the ceremonial place.

Photo credit: David Brabyn for the IHT

Singapore Musea

On Sunday we went to the Asian Civilization Museum on Armenian Street, but when we got there, it was closed for renovation until 2008. My guidebook was printed prior to the beginning of this year, which was when the Museum closed its door for a couple of years. Further reading revealed that this museum would reopen as a full-fledged Peranakan Museum (Peranakan is a term used to describe the assimilative Chinese culture to the Indigenous one.)

My friend and I decided to walk a few blocks to another museum, the Singapore Art Museum. The Museum celebrated the native sons and daughters, as well as those from neighboring South-East Asian nations. It is housed in what used to be the Catholic all-boys school, the St. Joseph's Institution. The current museum opened in 1996.

As I mentioned before, going to Singapore back in the 70s and 80s was synonymous with going shopping, not visiting galleries and museums. It was not for the lack of want, but back then, the focus of this city-state was its economy, and the government probably ushered foreigners from the airport right onto Orchard Road. Although there were educational outlets cum natural showcases, such as the Bird Park and Botanical Gardens, or entertainment for the masses such as the Sentosa Island, museums were not aggressively marketed. The Singapore Art Museum, for example, only opened in 1996. Like in Indonesia, the arts and the artists have always existed, but never appreciated and recognized the way they are now.

This Singapore Art Museum is quite young, which is apparent from its collection, but its 13 galleries with over 4000 works of art have made the museum the biggest collector of South-East Asian contemporary art in the region. One special exhibition, titled the Beneath the Pavement: Discovering the City, had a twist in the title. An image conjured up from such title of an exhibition was of the infra-structure of a city, or perhaps the sewage system, but in actuality, it referred to the basic element of a city: its people.

The layout of the temporary exhibitions could have been better planned and executed; the way some exhibit was arranged looked like an afterthought. The former open-air corridors of the building are now glassed in, but there does not seem to be any thought about shielding the work of art from the direct exposure to the sun.

***

On Monday we visited the "other" Asian Civilization Museum at the Empress Place. The one we visited on Sunday (the same one that was closed for the renovation) was Phase I. This museum, Phase II, is housed in the Empress Place (named after Queen Victoria, Empress of India) and has opened since February of 2003. More than a hundred of grade school to junior-year students happened to choose the same day to visit the museum. As a result, there was no studying any relics without hearing within an earshot some giggles or gossiping nearby. I limited my visits to the South-East Asia and China departments. The guidebook mentioned the conspicuous absence of Japan. I suppose in keeping with the non-confrontational attitude that is Singapore, it is better to keep potentially controversial and debate-arousing presence of Japan off the museum floor. Somebody has done a real life Photoshop!

Click here for more pictures.

Singapore, Revisited

Singapore…, boy, has this city changed since my last visit in 1991!

I am here to accompany a friend who had been wanting to come here for a while. This would be his first time ever. We flew in from Tokyo on a direct flight from Narita, arriving in the early evening, rush-hour Friday traffic. The interior of Chang-I Airport has not changed much at all, but the convenience was extremely remarkable: the path from disembarkation to the immigration hall to the luggage concourse to the taxi stand was the most straightforward route I had ever taken in my entire travel experiences (the opposite being Narita and Heathrow, among others).

My first trip abroad in the 70s was Singapore; in December 1975 to be exact, around Christmas time and shortly before our trip to Australia. Back then, Singapore was the affordable luxury for Indonesians residing in Jakarta: a weekend shopping trip, or a week-long wallet-walking. Well, that seemed to be the one and only reason to go to Singapore during that time: to shop, shop, and shop, and perhaps take a break and eat at the ubiquitous car park food fair in the evening. Most I knew never made it past Orchard Road, the famous stores-lined street.

Thank goodness my parents were not obsessed with shopping (although each and every member of our family has a weakness for any good bookstores). They took us to the satellite city of Jurong to see the Jurong Bird Park; the Tiger Balm Gardens (now the Haw Par Villa) and a trip to the Sentosa Island. The Tiger Balm Gardens, as one may suspect, was built by the Asian analgesic balm king, Aw Boon Haw, as an entertainment venue that featured Chinese legends and mythology.

Singaporean English was the first English with a local dialect that I have ever heard. When we were learning English, it was the formal British English, where rubber really meant eraser, and not the protective means that you put in your penis before a sexual intercourse. Our intonation was purely English, but to hear the locals speak English was quite entertaining, not too mention confusing at times. One evening, for example, we were trying to go back to the hotel, so my father told the taxi driver, “Hilton Hotel.” The driver kept looking at him quizzically. He kept on pronouncing the word with slightly different accents, but to no avail. Being the former Boy Scout that he was, he took out the hotel’s business card and handed it to the driver, who studied it seriously before a loud “A-HA!” “New-Toong Hotel!” said he. We were looking at each other and thought, “What?”

My father asked him to pronounce it again. He must have thought that this was how local pronounced the hotel’s name. So, the next time he told another taxi driver to go to “New Toong Hotel” and voilà, the driver understood it immediately. My father was beaming that he could speak like the locals; that was, until we were delivered to a hotel with the name Newton or something like that. Then the pronunciation game started all over again.

For me, that first time abroad to a country known for its discipline and hard working people opened my eyes to what a city-state could look like: the sidewalks were always swept clean, the store fronts spotless, and the people honest. Lee Kwan Yew, the Prime Minister at the time, was having a campaign where he wanted the people of Singapore to smile more frequently. In most department stores I went, I encountered employees spotting a fried-egg-sized bright yellow button of with a smiley face we came to know as “Mr. Groovy.”

Click here for more pictures

Sprinkles from Heaven

En route to my hotel on the first day here, the chauffeur showed me some people who stood in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary, located directly in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. There was a miracle, he said. The statue was crying. For days now, believers and plain gawkers have been flocking to the area to witness the shedding of the tear by the stone icon. It would have been difficult on that night to discern the difference between the tears and the drizzles that sprinkled from heaven.

I asked some locals, most of whom misinformed me that there were two religious camps in Vietnam: 50% Buddhism and 50% Catholics. Further reading shed better understanding on this topic: there are a handful of religions instead: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism (predominantly Mahayana, as opposed to Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism), and Christianity. The first three, along with Vietnamese animism (the belief that the material world possesses souls) combine to form the Tam Giao (Triple Religion). Catholicism in Vietnam, beginning around the 16th century, is today practised by 8-10% of the population. There are also Cao Daism (a religious sect that fuses the secular and religious beliefs of the East and the West), Hoa Hao Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. I was also informed that, unlike in China, communism in Vietnam did not eradicate the esixtence of any form of religion.

While driving across the United States might yield plenty of Flamingo and Gnome sightings on people's lawns and frontyards, driving through the countrysides of Vietnam produced a curious view: statues of either standing female manifestation of the Buddha, or of the Virgin Mary, or of Christ the Redeemer, all of whom occupied the second-story balconies of the people's two or three-story homes. Seen from outside, these figures (especially of the Virgin and Christ) seemed to welcome you into the owners' homes. Perhaps that was indeed the intention. I remember wondering if there was a sense of competition inter- and intra-religion (i.e.: Buddhism vs. Catholicism; the cult of Mary vs. the cult of Jesus Christ).

***

On an unrelated note, I also observed that during a trip to Nha Trang from Saigon (an arduous 9+ hour bus/van ride; mon Dieu I will take a plane ride next time . . . if there is a next time!) the existence of plenty of graveyards; or at least what I originally thought was formal graveyards, until someone explained to me that soldiers who died during the War were buried immediately and at the site where they had fallen.

The road between Saigon and Nha Trang was the same route used by the North to advance to the South, the very same area where the South positioned its defense. Rather than moving these makeshift burials to a designated formal graveyard or a military gravesite, the soldiers' families returned to the site and built upon the makeshift burial. As a result, the landscape along the route was dotted with mounds after mounds of memorials to the fallen ones.

I thought this was a more effective and constant reminder to any passers-by of the toll any war can take. Gathering the fallen soldiers in one formal site and honoring them would have been a solemn gesture, but leaving them where they fell across miles and miles of a major highway would hopefully persuade passers-by to reflect on their sacrifices.

***

During that same road trip, I was also amazed by the existence of many Internet kiosks. In the seemingly most remote village where I did not think electricity existed, there appeared kiosk after kiosk of Internet access. Word had it that Vietnamese who fled the country in 1975 and had returned back to Vietnam either to visit their relatives or to repatriate had decided to bridge the digital gap and to make modest amount of money in the process. That reminded me of the speed at which a Vietnamese friend of mine in Los Angeles travelled to get his hands into this burgeoning and blossoming market that was Vietnam.

Saigon, Have I Seen You Before?

I just landed at the Tan Son Nhat Airport (Saigon Airport), an airport built by the US Army that used to witness the comings and goings of the US military aircrafts during the Vietnam War. The airport bore a quaint reminder of what Jakarta airport was like in the 70s (quick, quick, if you do not know how the Jakarta airport looked like in the 70s, come to Saigon now!). Lines at the immigration was long, but there were more than ten staff members working to process the entrants. The immigration workers had dour faces and worked very slowly, doing what Indonesian immigration used to do a lot: stamping, stapling, stamping, stapling, stamping, stamping, stamping. Then more stamping, stamping, looking at the photo in my passport, then at my face, then stamping, and stamping again. Finally, another round of stapling and stamping, and then returning the passport to me. *Whew* I looked inside, there was only 1 stamp. What the hell?

There was another baggage scanning done during customs check, and observing very briefly, about 10% of the people were sent to the red lane for a more thorough check. A small kiosk of foreign exchange services stared me in the face so I took the opportunity to get my first Vietnamese Dong (VND): I have tried earlier to acquire VND in Japan and in Hong Kong, but none carried VND. The Hong Kong foreign exchange kiosk staff informed me that not a lot of people travelled there, so the exchange did not carry any VND. Back to the Saigon Airport foreign exchange kiosk: to my surprise, the bills given to me were spanking new. Certain bills, similar to the Indonesian Rupiahs, seemed to be made of Tyvek-like ingredients, making it untearable and longer-lasting.

It was drizzling outside when I finally breathed in the Saigon air, seasoned only with a hint of humidity as I chose to visit the country at the end of the rainy season. The hotel limo picked me up and drove me to my hotel (see review here), about 8 km away in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). I want to remind you that Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City are two names for the same city. Before 1975 the city was Saigon, but after that year, it was renamed the Ho Chi Minh City. According to guidebooks and learning from locals, the name Saigon is still much prefered here in South Vietnam.

As I was driven through the city, I felt a familiar scene welcoming me: low rise buildings and multitudes of store fronts, street vendors jamming the sidewalk and road traffic running amok, all serenaded with a cacophony of car horns and bike bells. Such encounters I have had in other Southeast Asian big cities. I could be in Bangkok or Surabaya, and probably would not know the difference unless I see local writings and hear people talking. All of these nations have been colonized at one point or another by a Western power: Indonesia (the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Japanese); Singapore and Malaysia (the British Empire); Vietnam (the French), and the Philippines (the Spaniards). Some came out strong and prosperous, some remained probably more or less the same, and some, like Vietnam, is still catching up with time.

I was delivered to District 1, so named probably because of its importance: most of the city's prominent buildings and formal government offices were located in this area, such as: the Reunification Palace (pictured above), the Opera House, the Main Post Office building, and the People's Committee Building (formerly Hotel de Ville), to name a few. For the rest of the late evening I stayed indoor, having woken up very early today to make the trip from Japan to Saigon by way of Hong Kong. I ordered Pho from room service, all the while telling myself not to expect much from any hotel food. I was surprised to find the dish very tasty, as tasty as the best Pho outside of Vietnam in Little Saigon (Westminster, Southern California).

*sigh*...gone is my first day in Saigon...

Japan Immigration Gets More Strict

There was an article late in 2004 that said that Japan Immigration at the major airports like Narita will start taking digital photographs of visitors coming into the country, much like what the United States had started doing recently. Prior to my arrival at Narita today, I prepped myself while still airborne, making sure that no one would take a horrible mugshot of yours truly after 11 hours of flight.

As it turned out, the photo-on-the-spot thing had not yet taken place, but what I noticed earlier was that the landing card had changed. It used to ask for a home address, which one was expected to fill in with a complete home address including street and address number, etc. This time around, only city and country needed to be mentioned. The space for "purpose of visit" used to be a very small block at the bottom corner of the disembarkation card, but is now extended with a multiple choice (business, tourism, transit, others...). They now also ask not only the address where you will reside during your visit, but also a phone number.

I was also oblivious to the fact that there was a fine print at the bottom of the landing card, advising me to turn the card around for more things to read and to fill. On the back side were four more questions about your visit and who you are, completed only when you sign at the bottom of the card. I failed to do this and was asked to do it on the spot. The immigration officer also asked the name of the person who was supposed to be my host. The officer was young, probably just out of college; he was very thorough and polite.

Customs did not give me any problem; it never has, really. The one time they did ask a lot of things, they got around in asking what I did. When I responded that I taught at a university, his demeanor changed. He thought I was a businessman. Apaprently Japanese still have respects for academic figures; how quaint.

Xin Tian Di and the French Concession

The Tranquil Sinan Lu in the Shanghai French Concession, originally uploaded by bloompy.

Xin Tian Di (the New Heaven and Earth) is located at the periphery of the French Concession. In the olden days, Shanghai is divided into different districts as a result of the Westerners trying to carve out a part of the city for their own fellow compatriots. Thus, Shanghai has the British Concession, the American Concession (these two later became the International Settlement), and the French Concession.

When I arrived at Xin Tian Di, I saw immediately the restaurant that my friend had recommended, Xin Ji Shi. I thought of going in but decided to walk around and take pictures first. The area retained and renovated the beautiful old-brick shikumen-style buildings (stone gatehouses). The complex, opened in 2001, is buzzing at night with the young crowd converging for eats and drinks and a little shopping. Instead of neon-advertising lights, the area employs small flags to announce the names of the businesses.

It was fortunate that I decided to walk around first, because then I bumped into T8, a restaurant that had been widely praised by critics and included in the Conde Nast top 50 restaurants in the world. My friend had also mentioned this restaurant to me, although he himself had never been. I will write a review of this restaurant in my yet-to-be created site, but for now, let it be known that this restaurant with a cuisine of Mediterranean and Asian fusion is worth going. The "M on the Bund" may have a balcony with a nice view of the Huang Pu River, but the food pales in comparison to T8. Stephen Wright, the executive chef here, is very friendly and approachable. The open kitchen -a square area where he and his staff performed their daily and nightly culinary tasks, protrudes into the dining room. From here he can survey the entire ground floor.

After this very satisfying lunch, I went to take a very long stroll into the French Concession, a walk that lasted for about 4 hours. I just followed the recommended stroll by the guidebook but occasionally strayed and went into the alleys and back ways, which always provided great opportunities for viewing the old "shikumen" style architecture. Of the 111 pictures shot today, some were of adults sitting, reading, working, socializing, and children playing. Yes, 111 pictures today and about 147 yesterday: ah, the joy of digital camera. You can just take as many with no worries about the developing cost. Even if you make a mistake, you can just take another one and delete the undesired ones later.

There was not much of a landmark in today's walk, except for the former house of Sun Yat Sen and Zhou En Lai on Sinan Lu; but the neighborhood alone was remarkable. I was surprised to find how clean Shanghai was: no trash lying around. (It was etched rather deep in my mind that most, if not all, Chinatowns in the western world and in Indonesia were always messy and littered with trash.) Just like the ones I found in the Bund area, the sidewalks and some of the buildings seemed very grimy, polluted, and could benefit from extreme scrubbing; but otherwise, the area was devoid of littered trash. Even when there was a construction (major and minor), the debris and trash were kept within its respective compound. Another friend did tell me that he had walked a little bit away from the city center, and that was where he found the run-down neighborhood with trash and puddles everywhere. There is a huge gap between wealth and poverty in the city.

Today I also came in contact with a lot of vehicular traffic; the fume proved too much at one point that I had to escape to a nearby garden, which happened to be the tranquil Ruijin Guesthouse, a sprawling compound with several buildings that are currently used for hotel rooms. I kept telling myself that I had to wash my face after I returned to my hotel. I must have looked like that grimy sidewalk by the end of the day; I need an extreme scrubbing as well, I suppose.

The Bund by the Huang Pu River

The Bund by the Huang Pu River, originally uploaded by bloompy.

Once in an exhibition at the now defunct Mill/Short Gallery in San Francisco, I attended the photographic show of a well-known Hong Kong artist named Fan Ho. The work was done decades before the gallery even existed, and the subject was Shanghai. The play of light and shadow in those black and white photographs remained permanently etched in the deepest pocket of memory. I dreamed that one day I would be able to see the architecture by the river that was immortalized by his camera.

That dream became a reality this morning as I went to see the Western-influenced architecture of the Bund by the Huang Pu (Wang Pu) River. I was originally planning to walk from my hotel to the site, but the concierge told me that it would take an hour by foot. Also, I was constantly reminded by the guidebook that Shanghai was not really a walking town the way Tokyo, London, and Paris were. Indeed, the taxi ride took some time but the traffic going to the Bund was not bad at all. While gobbling his breakfast, the enthusiastic driver slowed down to show me the vista as we approached the area. This caused the other drivers behind us to start honking like mad. I was delivered right in the middle of the Bund stretch, in front of the historic Peace Hotel (formerly the Cathay), whose ground floor currently housed the Citibank, the very institution I happened to need to visit.

According to the Lonely Planet Shanghai guidebook, the Bund got its Anglo-Indian name from the embankments built up to discourage flooding (in Hindi, "band" means embankment.) Bund buildings were first built on concrete rafts that were fixed onto wood pilings, which were allowed to sink into the mud. Thus, the bottom entrance step usually originated 2m in the air and sank to ground level with the weight of the building (Lonely Planet Shanghai, p. 30.) The architecture firm of Palmer and Turner was responsible for most of the buildings that became the famous façade of this mile-long stretch.

The area has changed drastically since the days the Cantonese photographer took his pictures of the Bund: The image of a solitary old man pulling a cart has been replaced by a mixture of noises coming from the creaking buses, screeching cars, and squeaking bikes. Across the Bund, right by the bank of the river, the city built a raised platform, parallel to the stretch, from which one could view the Bund on the one side, and the Pudong area on the other side. Pudong, the area East of the river, is the new development area of Shanghai where most of the new buildings took place. People say that the real Shanghai or the Old Shanghai is Puxi (the area west of the river) where the Bund is. Pudong is also the site of the Oriental Pearl Tower, a sight not unfamiliar in many of Shanghai's souvenir postcards.

Unfortunately, throughout my visit today, the haze never left the area. There was the sun peeking from behind the clouds, but this thin veil never really lifted up, leaving a gauzy impression of the Pudong cityscape. The angle of the sun also made it difficult to shoot a good picture, and as the name implied, "photography" depends very much on proper lighting. When I had my fill of shooting pictures, I crossed over the street by way of an overpass, and arrived at the side of the architecture. Aided by my guidebook and a culinary recommendation from a friend, I headed for the "M on the Bund" restaurant. I did not have a reservation, but I thought I would give it a try. As luck would have it, the famous restaurant, with a great vista from the balcony, was not full at all. I was seated not too far from the window. During the cold weather season, they closed the balcony, but the window provided a sneak peek at how charming it would have been to sit outdoors in a milder weather.

I ordered the set menu and set on reading my guidebook. Then I reviewed my pictures inside the camera, as well as took some shots from where I sat. By then, no one sat in the non-smoking area except for myself, so I had complete privacy. I took my time in that place, and when I finally felt satisfied, I left. I went on a second walking trip, this time along a stretch a block away from the main drag, but still running parallel to the Bund. I looked mainly at buildings that held some significance back in the heyday of Shanghai, around the 1930s, like the matching Hamilton House and the Metropole Hotel; and a Tudor building that used to house the former offices of the company that catered to Martini & Rossi. Although in general these areas are clean, the sidewalks are really grimy. They could benefit from some cleaning, but that may not be a priority in this city. The city is too busy focusing on building the skyscrapers across the river. I am just glad that they had the wisdom to keep this nostalgic façade of the Bund.

I shot some 145 pictures, although I sincerely doubted that any one of them would match any photograph of Fan Ho's, that Cantonese photographer.

Shang Hi, Everyone!

Shanghai Alley #1, originally uploaded by bloompy.

I still cannot believe that I am finally in China! I am at last in the land of my ancestors.

Pudong airport did not try to be beautiful; functionally, however, it served its purpose of ushering visitors into Shanghai and sending travelers out of China. My arrival gate was quite a long way to the immigration area, but once I arrived there, the passport check was a breeze; no questions asked. After grabbing my luggage, I went through customs, then got out to the welcoming zone filled with people who were picking up their friends and relatives. Once I went out of the airport and into the open air, four men approached me and aggressively steered my cart to go to their taxis. I barked at them and took hold of my cart. One of them cursed at me, so I decided to go back inside to ask for assistance. I wanted to know how much it would cost if I were to use a non-metered taxi, but the staff at the counter decided to escort me. With him, no one approached us. I was delivered to a legitimate taxi and off I went to Puxi, the "real" Shanghai, across the Huang Pu River. The ride would be about 40-60 minutes, costing about 150-200 Yuan, depending on the traffic.

The weather was beautiful: sunny and cool. My friend did say that travelling to China at the end of November and around the beginning of December would provide me with beautiful days like this one. Inside the taxi, I felt a draft (wind) from my right side, which at first I thought to be a hidden AC vent, but it turned out the door to my right had a hole and the air I felt was from the outside. I did not mind it because inside the taxi it was a bit warm. Along the way to Puxi, I saw many high-rise residential complex. Each complex had somewhere between 10 to 30 buildings, and each complex only employed a single design that was repeated many times. I have never seen so many housing complexes, but then again, I am now in the most populated country in the world.

The appearance of each complex varied from one complex to another: there were some that appeared very luxurious and some that looked dilapidated. They were all interspersed: there was not really one segment that was a poor area, and another that was glitzy; instead, I saw a few expensive-looking high rise buildings neighboring a seemingly mid-level priced housing, followed by a poor, run-down one, and then continued with a number of high priced buildings again; very interesting, indeed. The only common denominator was the airing of the tenants' laundry in the balconies. Even the ones that did not have balconies would put up their clothes-line by the window for maximum solar exposure.

Once we crossed a bridge whose named I never learned, I started seeing the familiar skyscrapers of Shanghai: the Oriental Pearl tower, the JW Marriott hotel (looking like one of the towers from the Lord of the Ring's second installment), the Jinmao Tower (the tallest structure in the city), the Four Seasons hotel, the JC Mandarin hotel, and some more. Once we got off the highway and into the surface street, suddenly I felt as if I were in Jakarta, Indonesia. The malls and the hotels had that typical Asian glitz, with each of them having shiny and glossy tiles, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and a grand entrance.

***

I wanted to go to the Bund on my first night here. I thought that with not too many people around at such late hours I could shoot some pictures, but the concierge told me that after 10pm, the lights that made the Bund a glorious spectacle would be turned off. So, instead, I just walked around my hotel, trying to scope the area. I ate at a restaurant that had many stalls on the sidewalk. It was called Bi Feng Tang. I ordered the neck pork (I have never had this before), vinegared chicken feet and shrimp dumpling (har-kau.) I ordered the dumplings to be safe, just in case the first two were not good. Turned out the first two were great, and the dumpling was just so-so.

Having lived for almost a year in Tokyo, it is rather a relief to be in a city like Shanghai, where the prices are very inexpensive. After the late dinner, I walked on the street of my hotel, passing different cafés and restaurants. Sometimes the chilly night and the overhanging streetcar's cables made me feel as if I were in Berlin; and sometimes certain small shops in the area reminded me of Paris. There were many beggars, mostly women in their 50s; and they were very aggressive in pursuing people. Because of it, I felt as if I were in Jakarta, but I kept reminding myself that I was in Shanghai! A recent Asian Wall Street Journal article actually talked in length about the industry of begging that had been developing in China, where conmen employed the tactic of using disabled or deformed children.

I look forward to exploring this city that has been called the Paris of the East, and the Whore of the Orient.