Shanghai Circle: 1. Shanghai People Through the Eyes of Outsiders

In ‘Shanghai Circle: 1. Shanghai People Through the Eyes of Outsiders’, I find myself wi[...]

In ‘Shanghai Circle: 1. Shanghai People Through the Eyes of Outsiders’, I find myself with a myriad of thoughts.

Duration: 1 Day. Places visited: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University. Published on 2007-07-02 10:37.

It seems that when we go out for a walk, compared to the Shanghai people online, their level is evidently higher.
1. Most of their expenses are covered by the company, whereas I pay for most of mine.
2. They travel internationally, to Europe, America, Southeast Asia, Japan, Vietnam, North Korea, Russia, Nepal, while I travel within the province. Even domestically, they visit places like Lijiang, Shangri-La, Daocheng, Jiuzhaigou, Lhasa, Guilin, Sanya, Fenghuang, while I visit Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, observing dilapidated buildings.
3. They travel by plane, while I travel by car or boat. Even when traveling by car, they drive with their girlfriends in private cars, traversing the nation with flair (currently, no netizens have chartered trains, with Bill Gates being an exception), while I take public buses.
4. Upon arrival at their destination, they take taxis without a second thought, spending seventy or a hundred yuan, while I squeeze onto public buses, subways, or walk.
5. They stay in hotels, spending eight hundred yuan a night and still consider it cheap, while I stay in small inns for twenty or thirty yuan.
6. They dine on seafood, spending thousands of yuan without batting an eye, while I eat local snacks that the common people eat.
7. In their conversations, they often interject with phrases like ‘killing a lot of film’ or ‘memory card full’, while I can only get a postmark from the post office as a souvenir.8. Their travelogues are titled with ‘romantic encounters’, garnering tens of thousands of clicks. While my poorly titled articles need to be changed three times by the moderators. Fortunately, I have thick skin and strong mental resilience.

Now, this train is heading from Shanghai to Fuzhou. Among the five passengers around me, one is clearly a young lady. Another woman has a certain charm. There is a middle-aged man, the manager of a Shanghai timber company. He says that although Shanghai’s subway and buses are crowded, there are no pickpockets. The mobile phone hanging from his waist has not been stolen. He says the phone is only two thousand yuan. Is that really something to be surprised about? There is a young man, the boss of a Shanghai clothing company. He says that the ticket for Wuyi Mountain’s Tianyou Peak costs sixty-five yuan. And he asks if sixty-five yuan is even considered money. I have great respect for these two men.

Soon it was mealtime. To save face, I deliberately went to the dining car to eat stir-fried dishes and drank a bottle of beer. But they both took out instant noodles from their large backpacks, soaked them in boiling water, and slurped them up. Which made me think for a long time. And finally I understood… the wealthy people of Shanghai prefer to eat instant noodles for their main meals.

Later, I was on vacation in Meidu Village, Limen Township, Zhouning County, Fujian Province. The villagers were very enthusiastic and invited me to take a ride in his car.This person sells steel in Shanghai. When discussing the local people of Shanghai, he often shakes his head in disapproval. He finds that Shanghai people, who also sell steel, are quite petty. Even for the smallest transactions, they insist on immediate payment from the buyer. They fail to understand that for projects worth tens or even hundreds of millions of yuan, it’s unlikely that someone would run away over a minor issue. This behavior leads to mutual undermining within the same industry. When business opportunities arise, and their store lacks the required specifications of materials, they don’t adapt. As a result, their shops are shrinking in size.

He also notes that restaurants run by Shanghai people close at seven o’clock in the evening, which he attributes to laziness. He believes this is the time to make money, yet they often justify their early closure by claiming it’s a state-owned establishment, without fear of ridicule. However, he acknowledges one significant advantage that Shanghai people have: they are fortunate. With the same test papers and scores in the college entrance examination, Shanghai residents can easily gain admission to prestigious universities like Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, and Tongji University for undergraduate studies. In contrast, people from Fujian are often limited to attending local junior colleges. When the country sets admission score lines, they are set low for Shanghai residents. Almost anyone can be admitted as long as they are not mentally retarded. During the Spring Festival, it’s a spectacle to see the 20,000 private cars owned by people from Zhouning and Pucheng County in Shanghai, as they drive home for the holiday.In some districts of Shanghai, the streets become spacious. Traffic police are the happiest.