Typhoon Goni

It rained a bit in Shanghai over the weekend, but particularly overnight on Sunday/Monday – typhoon Goni has been heading north from the Philippines, past Taiwan and now on up towards southern Japan.  Shanghai, right on the edge of the system benefited from some winds that woke me at night with the sound of some lashing rain.

Jinshajiang Rd/Zhenguang Road

The Jinshajiang Road/Zhenguang Road crossroads 100 metres from Richard’s office normally looks like this – the photo was used in the early days to show to the taxi drivers where to take him. Now he can get them to take him there in his best Chinese, without the need of the photo.

The Jinshajiang Road/Zhenguang Road crossroads on 24.8.15

Yesterday the crossroads looked like this.  That was once Richard had got there, on foot,  as the roads were clogged with old cars that had broken down in the floods and scooters slowly making their way through the water.

Flooding Jinshajiang Road

Traffic Jam in Jinshajiang Road flood

Impasse in the floods

The movement of the traffic wasn’t helped by the normal pig-headed attitude of many drivers in China – this traffic was going nowhere:

Flood-ready foot-wear

Whereas Richard did get somewhere – for a mile – as that was the nearest that the taxi driver could get to his office – with his trousers rolled up and his shoes and socks in the bag with his better pair of shoes.  Later on in the day he had to do exactly the same thing, in reverse, on his way out to visit a customer, another mile bare-foot through the floods. But he was wearing his cheap trousers made of polyester which drip-dried and he had his better shoes with him in a bag, as he had seen it all before.  On Monday morning having seen the amount of rain when he got up he came prepared, with the right trousers and a back-up pair of shoes. When he got home in the evening he checked his legs and feet for cuts just in case he needed to apply some judicious savlon.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Shanghai others were coping with the floods as best they could:

A Shanghai Oriental Airlines crew boards a bus leaving the airport

Pedestrians try to cross a flooded street outside a Shanghai Metro Station

(photos courtesy of The South China Morning Post)

I had planned to go out and learn to play Mahjong, but I chickened out and stayed at home instead.

Shanghai is built on a river delta.  Creeks criss-crossed this area, but many have been filled in and now roads run where the water once did.  But when they built the roads, they didn’t put in adequate drains, so when it is raining you see people walking around in wellingtons even when the temperature is up in the 30s, as we did this weekend.  Perhaps we need another trip to Hongqiao Pearl City to buy ourselves a pair of “Hunter” wellingtons each, as neither of us packed a pair when we came out here.

We have had many firsts in China…..as Richard texted me: “Never before walked in barefeet to a potential customer”.