Shanghai is exhausting, not just because of the heat and the humidity at the moment, and not just because of the streets, shops and metro teeming with people who have a different sense of personal space than we westerners – if indeed that have any feel for it at all.  There  are some Chinese who will cut you up, walk into you, touch you as a stranger with no apology, stand in the most inconvenient places for all but themselves.  They will walk across your path with inches, maybe even just centimetres to spare and think nothing of it.  Meanwhile as a westerner I’m ducking and weaving, stalling, side-stepping to maintain my save western personal space, in a sea of people who often have their heads buried in their mobile phones.

But that’s not all.  There is so much here of everyday life that is different from home that I’m constantly looking about me and absorbing what is going on.  The different shoes – perhaps they are made from the fabric that you’d see on the inside of a cool bag, the lack of  colour co-ordination in many of their outfits, their different facial features – Shanghai is a melting pot for peoples from all over China, just like London has become.  It is even worse if I’ve got my camera out, because I want to record those differences because they are interesting, or exciting, or dangerous, or bizarre.

Yesterday I got my camera out on the way to the Metro Station.  I’ve taken you on this route before but yesterday here is yet more to show you.

Dumped Rubbish

Rubbish is dumped on the pavements in all sorts of places.  Sometimes it is cleared away by the recyclers, sometimes it is not.

Fruit is sold in a number of outlets.  Here you often find fruiterers, shops that just sell fruit – something that disappeared from the UK decades ago – but fruit, such as durians and watermelons, is also sold from the back of lorry or from a flat-bed tricycle.  This fruit shop has just opened

Fruit-seller with tricycle

Fruit and Smoothie Outlet

up at the end of Golden Street in the last week or so.  They’ve put tables and chairs outside and you can buy smoothies and drink them there.  At the end of Golden Street there is also

The Marquee

Peripatetic Antique Shop

a marquee that comes and goes.  I think this is the third time its been here since we arrived in the middle of January.  It houses antiques – grim, dark 20th Century antiques that

Dodgy work techniques

Last week’s workmen

nobody wants to buy.  They don’t like have photos being taken of them either – I got shouted at.  Near here there were workmen working in unthinkable conditions had they been in the UK. Whilst the same

Car Accident

dodgy working methods were used 50m from here on the other side of Gubei Lu only last week.  On Gubei Lu itself there had been a car accident – the taxi driver and the red car had collided.  Every time we look out of  our apartment window we see bad driving. But accidents happen much less frequently than one would expect given the general free-for-all that goes on in lane discipline, turning right, obeying red lights and the sometimes crazy road layouts.  Another group of workmen were cleaning out the ponds in

Cleaning Golden Street Ponds

Takashimaya Pond

Golden Street – this is the second time I’ve seen them do this in the last couple of months, whilst the white gravel pond outside Takashimaya seems to have been cleaned at least once a month since we have been here – the pond is drained, the white stones are individually washed and everything is put back together again.  I can’t help thinking that there is a design fault here.

Scooter sunshade

Another sunshade

Scooter with body warmer

The early photographs this day are steamy – my lens couldn’t cope with the difference in temperature and humidity between our air-conditioned flat.  The sunshades are starting to appear on the scooters – they were all over Taipei when we were there last summer. But that doesn’t stop some of the scooters still having their winter body warmers, or the scooter riders wearing a shirt or a coat on backwards, something we have seen them

Un-buttoned back to front jacket

Running Gear

doing all year.  What is wrong with buttoning it up and wearing it the right way round?  It being the rainy season I can sort of understand why the local sports shop was advertising cagoules in their shop window – but in this heat I thought they were being rather optimistic displaying the leggings underneath the shorts …….

Bags of Rice Cakes

Rice Cakes Flying out of the Cooker

Rice cakes are made on a machine just inside this shop’s door.  When we bought some the other day the shopkeeper wouldn’t accept payment for them along with our other goods – we had to pay our 10 kuai (£1) to the lady who was operating the machine.  We wondered if she rented the machine on an hourly basis from the shopkeeper, but we had no way of telling. When I had photographed the machine another time there was no-one operating it, it just cooked, pressed and flung the disks of rice into the glass collecting area a bit like a machine at a fun fair.

Asleep at the Wheel

Asleep at the Table

People were sleeping anywhere – that’s stockinged feet at the steering wheel.  But it was also one of the many times of the day when the Taobao deliveries were taking

Taobao Delivery Man

Bustle-Wearing Cat

place  – the man was trying load his parcels and his trolley onto his scooter – there was a 5 gallon drum of liquid in the footwell of this scooter as well.

In the other direction, on the other side of Gubei Lu this cat in a bustle is used to advertise a clothes shop.

Hybrid Logistic Scooter

Meanwhile the Hybrid Logistics man thought, as many do, that it was OK to scoot past me on the footpath, but it was not until I had got past the scooter that I realised that it was not just the parcels that were taped up and ready to go.

As I got to the top of the first escalator towards the entrance to the metro I came across this man wearing a face mask, as many do here in Shanghai.  Now I’ve not worked out whether they wear their masks if they have a cold to stop their germs from spreading, or whether it is in attempt to combat the threats of pollution.  If it is the latter I found it rather amusing that the reason why his face mask is down is because he was having a ciggy.