Monday 7 April 2008

Shanghai


After the heat and humidity of Singapore we headed up to Shanghai to check out the art scene.
Wendy almost died in the car when we took a taxi from the airport. The drivers here are CRAAAZZZYYY! As we are weaving in and out of traffic in a taxi that could pass as a tin can, Rob is playing a game on his Blackberry while Wendy is white knuckling in silence. Rob looks at Wendy and says "are you okay?" and Wendy murmurs something like "uh huh" and then Rob says " why dont you put on your seatbelt" and Wendy shrieks "because there aren't any!!!!". Simultaneously the driver is picking his nose and spitting out the window. Welcome to Shanghai...

On another level, Shanghai is breathtaking in many ways. For starters it is so polluted that on some days you can't see the top of the skyscrapers. Secondly, it is so large it makes New York look like a little village.
Its a fun place. The food is great. The city has huge energy and we had a fun time. We met with some friends who live there and got a great insider's tour of the restaurants, bars and clubs.
The skyline at night is incredible. It is like Times Square times 50. Rob and I just could not get over the enormity of it all.
We spent some time checking out the art scene here. A friend set us up with a Turkish woman who teaches art at the NYU branch in Shanghai and also has her hands in just about every other art related area in the city and she showed us around the Moganshan district where the majority of the galleries reside. I was shocked at how expensive everything was, in some rare cases literally 6 times what would be asked for in NYC. Nothing really caught our eye so we left Shanghai empty handed, but full of the experience we had in this crazy city!

3 comments:

rina&menon said...

looks as if you guys are having a great time. we are off to london this weekend- rina' is running the london marathon. will try and talk to you guys on skype

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