Disembarking in Shanghai

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The people in Shanghai definitely seem to know how to work the ports.  Maybe even specifically how to work Semester at Sea.  I know some places do have certain events planned specifically for when our ship comes to town.

 

In any case, right when we got off the boat, standing just at the end of the port driveway were a number of sellers.  They approached us to offer watches, wallets, currency exchange, laser pointers, and probably a number of other things.  I didn’t know how to say “No, thank you” in Mandarin at that point, so I just continued through with the rest of my people.

 

There was a bridge that we had to cross before we could get to the ticket station – just a tiny little one, like the width of a standard two lane road or so.  There was a guy laying down on the sidewalk.  He was holding a bag in one hand and holding his chest with the other.  He was staring blankly and on his side, sort of convulsing a little bit, and maybe vocalizing just a tiny bit too, I can’t really remember.  We all wondered what the hell was wrong, and we also saw a man in a POLICE yellow jacket running away from him and around a corner – so maybe there had been help.  Dani, one of my friends, spoke a little bit of Mandarin and tried to talk to him to see if there was anything we could do, but apparently he said nothing back, or just said one word over and over that she didn’t know.  Eventually another local walked by and sort of shooed us away.

 

Our guess and hope is that he was just acting.  He was gone when we returned, and we never heard anything about him again.

 

A woman came to us and started talking to us.  She wasn’t trying to sell us anything – at least, not in any obnoxious way.  She said that she’d learned English in high school but hadn’t really used it since, and she was 35 years old now and had a family and kids.  Toby and I were pretty surprised at how good her English was.  She lead us all to the train ticket office that we couldn’t really use, but it was nice of her to try anyway.  She said that business had been good recently, and that she usually hung out in the area where we were, and that she grew up in Shanghai (I think).  I couldn’t really tell if she was a legitimate watch seller or one of the ones on the streets.  I started off thinking the first, but ended up thinking the second.  In either case, she seemed really nice and she was doing it for her family.  So I hope she does well.