FoodMeetsLifestyle.com

Overall, we've had a really great long weekend in Shanghai. It is quite impressive what they have built up in the past 15 years - you can really tell this is an upcoming megacity, with stunning futuristic sky scrapers growing like mushrooms. Particularly if you look at Pudong, the newest business area, you can see the ongoing development, as you come by unnumbered building sites in progress, among others the now world's highest building (its shape reminding of a beer opener), which is just about to be finished. The city, amidst the thriving new world, still spreads some of the prosperous colonial-style flair of the booming trading and financial activities in the 1920, as you can see in the pretentious interiours of the neo-classicist and art-deco buildings along the "Bund".

Especially coming from the ultra-organised and extremely well-mannered Tokyo though, the cultural shock was quite striking. The contrast between the two cities really could not be any bigger. Street life is rough and chaotic in Shanghai, with hundreds of vendors obtrusively trying to sell you anything that's fake. Getting around the city can hence be quite stressful. Riding the brand-new and ever-expanding metro is an experience on its own - as opposed to Tokyo, where people queue for just everything, in Shanghai you just have to somehow try to forcefully make your way into and out of the cars. Just crossing one of the busy streets is equally adventurous, and not only because some important pedestrian passways are still under construction.

Not only the low public transport and taxi fares suggest the still pretty wide gap between those who can and those who cannot keep pace with the new buoyant lifestyle, just as you find some really badly kept buildings next to the sparkling new ones. There are some really cool and fancy cocktail bars (in fact, I've had much better cocktails here than in the six weeks I've spent in Tokyo so far), but their clientele are obviously mainly expats. We also had some delicious Cantonese food at a clearly expat-priced place called Wan Tai Lou (which, compared to usual Tokyo price levels, was still a really good deal); we experienced some (to us) completely new tastes while enjoying the view of the Pudong skyline, sumptuously illuminated at night.

Althoug not quite what you would call relaxing, our stay was certainly very exciting. And after this experience I am starting to feel even more at home in Tokyo. Suddenly everything feels so familiar here - by now I can make myself understood and understand bits of pieces of simple conversations, and I am at least vaguely acquainted with the dos and don'ts to smoothly get along in every-day life.