shanghai is, like hong kong, not china.
strictly speaking, of course, it is, even more so than hong kong (which is a “special administrative region”), but it doesn’t feel like it. it feels like new york. there’s tons of people and storefronts and neon and markets and taxi’s and white people. i did not come to china to see any of these things.
there’s one area, called the bund, which is like a riverfront walkway which gives you a tour of the city’s varied historical influences. as you walk along the bund, you can see the riverfront architecture change from english to german to french to soviet as each of these controlled shanghai from time to time. it’s nice and i took pictures.
other than this and a handful of museums (some quite good), shanghai has more to offer the businessman than the tourist during the day. like any city worth its salt, there’s no shortage of activities after nightfall…
one final note. the hostel i stayed in had a projector set up in a lounge area and showed at least one movie every night, often the request of people staying there. bootleg dvd’s were easy to come by on the street and many would buy some and come home to play them right at the hostel. this is exactly what the danish fellow from our last post did and would you like to guess what movie he bought? jackass 2.
now, the chinese are somewhat reserved. pornography is outlawed and there’s not a lot of toleration for obscenity. every major media outlet is state-controlled and the state is not idle. as a consequence, they are still quite sensitive compared to americans. granted, the youth have a thicker skin than the older generation, but even many chinese college students are unfamiliar with sexually-charged joking and vulgarities. so this is the environment that our great dane wants to show jackass.
this was probably one of the few times i have been embarassed to be an american. this is not a cultural export i am proud of. there are parts of it i can laugh at it and i’m not so outraged that i would advocate any sort of censorship. i simply always advocate taste. shock appeal carried the day, however, and jackass 2 was popped in the dvd player.
almost as if in answer to my unspoker prayers, within about 15 seconds the picture started to skip and blur and then completely stalled. international disgrace averted and chinese quality control takes another hit. a shame, really.
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