Shanghai Yummy

When public transportation is done right, it can be very convenient, cheap, and (dare I say) pleasant to get from place to place within a city. Examples of cities that I think have this concept down right are London, Paris, Hong Kong, and New York. The city that is the absolute opposite of this is Los Angeles, where the system is utterly useless. Shanghai is about halfway in between. That is to say, I can get just about everywhere on the system, cheaply, but sometimes it can be quite far from pleasant.

When my dad used to work for Lucent, they had a chauffeured Cadillac deVille and I have to admit one of the things that I enjoyed about visiting them was the "pretending to be rich oil barons" bit. Those days being a thing of the past, I've instead been able to get a real taste of the true heartbeat of Shanghai. Not to mention a whiff of the true odor... Deoderant appears to be optional.

All the busses have plenty of grab bars because out of the 80 people on a bus during rush hour, only maybe 20 are sitting. Sometimes, the bus gets so packed that I don't even bother with the grab bars because, hey... there's no way I could fall if I tried. If you have any concept of personal space, leave it at the door. Not the door of the bus. The door of the airplane when you first arrive.

The metro is a little more pleasant. For one thing, it can save quite a bit of time because you don't have to deal with the traffic. The thing is, don't expect the people waiting on the platform to wait for the people disembarking to clear out before they shove their way onto the train. Even though there are signs all over the trains and stations imploring people to be civil, they aren't. It's just a mentality that is, unfortunately, ingrained into these people. Same thing with elevators, and any other doorway for that matter. Another thing that I'm uncomfortable with is sitting down on the subway or bus. Not because there's something unpleasant on the seats, but because I have this outdated mode of thinking in which I think seats should be for the elderly, infirm, etc... I even get uncomfortable when I'm sitting and there's a lady in high heels standing. So I don't sit. But don't expect this behavior out of anybody else. The last thing about the subway is that the system is not as extensive as it is in other major cities. There are two line of subway and one light rail line, and unfortunately, that's it.

Anyhow, if you can get used to being among the hordes, public transportation in Shanghai can be quite useful.