Shanghai, China, Part I

From Xi'an, I took another overnight train to Shanghai. Now, I try to seperate what I hear from other travelers from my own experience and try not to let their impressions influence my own but I think people I have talked to have been spot on about Shanghai.

In short, I hate it here.

Alright, that is an exageration. But I do not care for it much at all. I also try to seperate the weather from how I feel about the city. (Partially because I know Chicago weather can be less that ideal on occasion.) But, it did not stop raining while I was there and put in a bad mood the entire time. I could not do enjoy or even do half of what I wanted to because of the constant, unyielding rain and could not enjoy what I did do.

I saw very few of the few attraction the city has to offer and those that I did were not only obstructed by the weather, but also my the terrible smog and the construction in preperation of the Shanghai 2010 Expo. Also, nobody really knows what the Shanghai 2010 Expo is. Really, I have asked dozens of people, including people that live here and others that work for its development, and nobody can tell me what it is for sure. What I have gathered (meaning, my best guess) is that is going to be Shanghai's effort to show the world that it can be an alpha-city like New York and London and Tokyo. Well, I am biased because I like New York and London and Tokyo, but, sorry, Shanghai, I do not see it happening.