What Shanghai Makes A Little Japanese Stud Feel Like?
The 5-day-trip to Shanghai (上海) and Suzhou (蘇州) starts letting me feel traveling alone is not bad. Why there? No special ideas toward China. Only the fact that I hadn’t been there and the tickets to China are the cheapest had me choose this giant neighbor country as my destination for this time.
Flood of People
In Shanghai, what made me surprised at first is the flood of people in the subway at 6am on Saturday. This is because Shanghai has 14 million people. And cities around Shanghai such as Hangzhou (杭州), Nanjin (南京) and Suzhou (蘇州) also have the similar population with Osaka. It seems like China has more than 10 Osaka inside the country! The number of citizens is about 10 times of Japanese, and numerous domestic tourists all over Shanghai didn’t allow me to be a foreigner. As a matter of course, they required me speak in Mandarin. Actually, I heard Japanese language only 4 times during the trip.
Plus, the atmosphere of the town seemed like between Tokyo and ASEAN capitals. Air is not as bad as expected, and what they said “It’s worse than in Ho Chi Minh city.” in Vietnam was no longer hold true. Bicycles and electronic motorbikes keep it clean. In Shanghai, I felt both chaos and technology are mixed.
Good Aspects of Communism
Subway also shows the goodness of Shanghai. Chinese passengers on subway are more organized than I expected from images featured in Japanese media reports. A number of population parameter is one of the reasons Chinese are reported badly. Some Japanese businessmen on train in the morning are also rude. Beside, Shanghai subway is more convenient compared to Japanese one! How troublesome to switch trains from Tokaido line to Tokyo metro Hibiya line at Tokyo Station! :( Since China doesn’t have some train companies, they don’t have or eliminate stakeholders to avoid such kinda troubles.
Another element which made me feel convenient in Shanghai is WeChat. Almost every financial transaction can be done on WeChat. The great example is ofo; bicycle sharing service in some cities in China. ofo allows us to ride whenever and wherever we like and provides eco-friendly transportation style. And of course, we can pay for it only on WeChat. WeChat makes many things possible, which haven’t been achieved by Facebook or LINE because of sizes of population, domestic rules or having to be beyond borders.
How Minority Behaves Here
The conclusion of my stay; it’s hard to be unique here. And no incentive to understand the whole society of China or even one city in China. Here, minority has to respect the majority at first. That’s what it should be and like the case of Ahok in Indonesia. To tell the truth, I couldn’t imagine that I’ll influence even to only a part of Chinese economy.
China just continues to go on the economical and governmental royal road which is estimated by demography. That’s why no hero appears here while on the other side of the world we have Trump in the US, Duterte in the Philippines and Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, I guess.
