Shanghai

Shanghai, how can i describe the city?

BIG City.

The famous Pearl Tower at Lujiazui district

Thats all, do i need to describe more? Honestly, thats my first impression when i stepped down from the plane and thats the same impression i had in my mind when i board the plane leaving the country after 3 days of stay.

Chinese faces, here, there, everywhere.... I think this was one of the rare moments in my life that i'm actually felt bored looking at so many Chinese faces. In fact after some time, all of them look monotonous and unvarying, blame it to my eyes, which has been pampered too much by the different myriad of colors, culture and diversity we had in Malaysia. For some reason, the chinese faces with fair skin, small eyes, but very fast moving lips and super loud voice are not appealing to me. Ironically, despite of my chinese blood running wild in me, i felt more Malaysian than Chinese when i'm on this land where chinese is most vastly populated.

In attempt to try to experience the local life, as usual i went for the street food, travel around the city in their very very packed LRT, engage in conversation with the taxi drivers etc. However, nothing much ignited my interest. There are BIG shopping malls with hundreds of stores, well, Malaysia have mega malls as well; there is a world 3rd tallest viewing platform-Pearl tower, well our KLCC can do the same, except maybe not as tall as them; the shanghai river which seperates the habour city into Pudong and Puxi is the source of all the economic activities, i have seen the similar river (wider and greater view) in Paris and Edinburgh; Then there is the XinTianDi, which is supposed to be the famous french quarter copycat shopping street, but sad to said that it was totally blown out of propotion (in the tourist guide) as the street is just few hundred metres long, full of starbucks and coffeebeans, not even a bit close to how the real french quarters in European countries look like.

Kudos to the Shanghainese! As what their leaders had envisioned, Shanghai has truly become a global city, for the global villagers, in which foreign people came from all around the world would find easy to adapt and blend in. However, it has also lost the charm of the old Shanghai. The city which never sleep, the city which full of chinese music, food and nostalgic old streets. The city which i craved so much to see and experience.

Its funny that when i'm travelled thousands of kilometres back to my ancestry home, a place where my bloodline traced back to, i felt totally foreign.

*sudden surge of proudness*

i'm felt like a Malaysian more than ever.