Shanghai adventure pt 3

The latter half of my Shanghai trip is going markedly better than the former. And I was already in love with the city; I WILL be back.

Today I left my friend's hotel and went to check out the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre. I'm not really into history, but art and design I'm all about. They had descriptions that discussed a bit of both, which was nice. The place was pretty well hidden, it was in the basement of one building in an apartment complex. It seemed pretty dodgy going downstairs in the tiny elevator, but I did get out with all my organs in tact, so that's a bonus. It was actually pretty busy, there were other Americans, French, Germans and Dutch people there while I was there. And it's not a big place. I'd be interested to know how they all heard about it, since I heard from a friend of mine that I think had been.

Then I came to my next hostel (I blew off hostel #2 last night due to missing check in time whilst at the Pearl Market and stayed with my friend again). Hostel #3 is a total win. It's in the middle of the city, but down a really cool looking alley, full of foreigners and Chinese, it has a bar, wifi, is clean, they gave me a towel (ha)... in short I'm quite happy.

Right off the bat I set out to find some lunch, which can be challenging. I can tell if something is a restaurant from the outside usually, but if the menu doesn't have pictures I'm kind of screwed. My food vocabulary consists of "bread," "noodles," "chicken," "pork" and "beef." About a block away from the hostel I came up behind a guy I had seen inside and heard speaking English, so I started up a conversation with him. As luck would have it, he was en route to get lunch as well.

He actually does IT stuff for one of the really big, private English chain schools in China. He invited me to a brunch tomorrow with everyone he works with, mostly IT and content management (did someone say writing?!) people; unfortunately it's in the afternoon and I have to leave for the airport around 3pm. Sad panda.

So we came back to the hostel and he went to do god knows what and I came to use the wifi a bit before I wander out again. While I've been sitting here, I've had the pleasure of doing something I haven't been able to do in a REALLY long time: eavesdropping.

There is what sounds like a French kid here that seems to be stalking a Chinese girl, and perhaps she led him on a bit first. He's changing hostels because he thinks this one is expensive (I think it's like $11 USD a night right now, and that's holiday rates, not what I'd call pricey), he wants her to go with him and also somewhere in there it sounds like he's trying to take a trip to Hong Kong without a visa and wants her to buy his ticket? Bizarre.

Because I so rarely hear English or anything I can understand, I tune out 99% of the sounds around me in China. Even if I don't have my headphones in, it can take me a minute to realize someone's calling my name or something because I'm just so used to not paying attention. The one thing I AM super in tune to is music. Whether it's in English or not, they play a lot of western music here, and I'm always the first to notice. I think when I go back to the States next on holiday, the amount of audio stimuli is going to be very overwhelming.