Early Shanghai Review.

I just started working in a big company in Shanghai. Today is my third day and I’d like to share some early observations.

Please keep in mind, that I spend these 3 days in the office and went to the city only in the evenings. Well, once I went to the police office in working time, spent in the line two hours and found out that I came to no purpose, but it doesn’t change anything.

Flight Moscow-Shanghai with full plane of Chinese passengers.

What freaks out.

1. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and sometimes Google services are blocked. The workaround is VPN, which slows down already slow internet. I mean really fucking slow internet.
2. Chinese don’t know English, but those unicorns who do, tend to not loosing face speaking bad English, so they prefer to pretend they don’t know it at all.
3. Two places I’ve found English words at are work and subway.
4. Nothing works from first attempt… neither from second. They say it works, you try, it doesn’t, they promise to fix it, they say it works again, you try again, it doesn’t work again, they promise again, and so on. All this shit is about some very simple stupid problems.
5. Business centre and store interiors are well worn-out. No one cares how things look once they’re built.
6. I saw unique kind of sales managers in centrally located branded stores. They wear short crumpled pants, cough and eruct right at a work place.
7. Cheap Chinese food is often tasteless, and no sauces available. On the other side is ultra spicy food that kills food’s taste. People say newbies always have diarrhea first weeks — month. I stand firm 3rd day.
8. There is no one to catch an experienced eye if you know what I mean. I only put my eye on some one once, and it was european.
9. There are lines, and there are some rare Chinese people who don’t give a shit about lines, they just need to be first. This kind of people have a chocolate tan, sea-horse like carriage, they spit loudly in the most crowded places, and don’t mind to pee on a lawn in front of a business centre.
10. Some business centre workers smoke right in a toilet cabins… motherfuckers!
11. Drivers can not distinguish traffic lights colours.
12. Vehicles that turn right don’t notice pedestrians crossing a road at a proper place on green light.
13. Taxi drivers love to horn with no reason.
14. Every evening someone slips “massage” advertising cards under my suite door… two times per evening.

These buildings are huge and first time I saw them I started talking to myself: “wow, fuck, fuck, tall, high, impressive, shit, omg, cool, awesome, fuck”. The front one is Shanghai Financial Center (101 floor, 492m). At the back you can barely recognize another not finished skyscraper called Shanghai Tower (121 floor, 632m) which is currently the second tallest building in the world.

What is cool.

1. If you want adventures and challenges, this is the right place to be!
2. Many cool and diverse places with futuristic and classic architecture.
3. There are really impressive skyscrapers and views.
4. Streets are clean.
5. People smile. It may sound weird, but in Ukraine they don’t.
6. Road quality is decent and car rental is cheap, but who cares if you can’t use your international driver’s license.
7. High-tech Park resembles Silicon Valley with a high concentration of tech companies in a cool looking glass buildings. A nice place to hang around and work at.
8. Nice, guarded, green mansion clusters around huge Century Park.
9. Many unique traditions that are interesting to get to know.
10. Everyone in subway is staring at smartphone or tablet.

1 of 16 people is not looking to a mobile device. Is she infected or a foreigner?

I apologize for my English and I did not intend to offend Chinese people as some may think. Actually I’m slowly starting to fall in love with Chinese people… some of them.

Don’t miss a chance to read my “Relocation to China for Dummies” with step by step instructions on what and how to do.