Life is in Shanghai is good. However, being in the largest city in the most populous country in the world has its drawbacks. Traffic, pollution, noise - all the regular urban problems most big cities anywhere in the world face. However, for me, there is a sense of well-being here. The only "crime" I've seen are a couple of taxi drivers who wanted to take the long way home. It has been said more than once that there are more cops in Shanghai than dogs.

Traffic is remarkably free-flowing for a city of this size. It is likely because owning a car is severely expensive for the average person. Also, there is a limit on licenses here. My brother-in-law was one of the lucky ones to get a license to buy a car in the recent license auction. He was one of the 1200 winners out of 3000 who applied and it only cost him about US$1200. There is still not much reason for us to have a car. We are spending less than 20% of what it cost us to maintain a very modest used car in the US using taxis everyday.

Noise is a factor here. Our apartment is pretty quiet due the cement block construction. Taxis drivers love to use their horns and there is ongoing construction going on in seemingly every block. Within 2 blocks of us, 3 major high-rise projects are underway and they are demolishing an old building complex next to ours with sledgehammers.

Remember in an earlier travel log, I mentioned the people who moved in next door? They moved on and the 5-storey solid cement building is coming down one whack a time. There are days that pollution builds up and settles on the city like a thick gray blanket and there are days the wind blows the smog away to reveal a sparkling clear day. The river is not something you want to swim in. But in these times, I have seen that in every major city I have visited for the past ten years. All in all, Shanghai handles the those urban issues well.

We have had a number of interesting excursions since the last log. We have tasted some goodies from a few of the local restaurants. There is a myth that you can order dog and cat as regular fare. Those are not popular dishes here and I have not been to a place yet that have them on the menu. We have had, however, very tasty frog legs, very delicious eel, rabbit, along with the standard pork, beef, chicken, vegetables and tofu. We will get into a few of the specific restaurants we visited in our Best of Shanghai articles on this site. Most restaurants here know the meaning of fresh- especially where seafood is concerned. Most good sit-down Chinese restaurant have large tanks where the fish, eel, turtles, shrimp, and snakes are kept alive until they ready to be prepared for an order.

My mother, in her recent visit from the US, noticed that all the dinners we ate out seemed like a lot of food. With 6 of us around the table, a dozen or more dishes who come steaming out of the kitchen. She also noted that portions were smaller than in the US and that eating with chopsticks, one probably ends up eating slower and less overall quantity than a "normal" dinner in the US. We have never walked away hungry from anywhere we have eaten and I am still loosing poundage and feel great. All in all, I have been pretty happy with the food here.

It is May and starting to get hot. We still have not had to use the air conditioner, though we have broken out our short sleeves. I actually expected it to be a lot warmer here than it has been.
It is remarkably moderate. We have lots of foggy mornings off the river and sunny days that follow. All the rain so far has been very light and refreshing. I like it when it rains here, because the morning bicycle rush hour turns into an amazing rainbow of color from the different color rain gear each person is wearing. It is a sight. More to come.