How much for happy?
On a quest to at least buy a few souvenirs for friends before they all thought I was being inconsiderate, a group of girls and I ventured out across the street from our hotel and into the underground shopping plaza. Even though the malls were literally a road away, it took ten minutes to actually get there because of the ways streets and lanes were divided and partitioned with rails. Every time you needed to cross the road, you’d walk to the end of the block instead of leaving where you want to go.
The underground plaza was small but filled with little shops selling women’s clothes, shoes, accessories, trinkets, toys but also many small food and snack stores. Luckily for a lot of us, shopkeepers were much less adamant on getting our attentions unlike the ones in Beijing. Crowded as usual, I couldn’t help but wonder if the locals are actually happy with their lifestyles here. Almost everything about Shanghai is commercial; you can shop everywhere and eat whatever you want at little costs. But is it a fair price to trade with how much they work and study just to have their little leisure?
As a middle class Bangkok-er, I live a good life when I go back to visit the homeland. Still, I’m curious how hard people have to work to earn enough spending money just for the fun social activities that are everywhere here. These thoughts are sporadic, curious and doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I’ve no idea where else to spill them.
Anyways, back to what I did see in Shanghai:
The day we visited the financial center, I had to find an HSBC bank to get more money before I become completely broke. Rainy advised us to go to the mall across from the TV tower because she believed there is at least an ATM branch there but she was unfortunately wrong :( However, upon entrance I noticed a Thai style shrine along with Thai flags all over the front of the mall. Rainy also didn’t understand why, but I found with my own research that a Thai corporation financed the creation of this mall. Thailand Expo was also held here not too long ago, which made me feel at home for a second. Unfortunately, the battery on the camera died right before I got a photo with elephant statues whose skin was imprinted with coins.
The financial center wasn’t too exciting to me. We had just come out of a lame lecture with a pretentious business advisor who blabbed about nothing (he did offer free pringles though) so I was about ready to go back to the hotel and roam on my own. In that financial area, we were given a little less than an hour to walk around but couldn’t go inside due to lack of time (and money for tickets). By this time it was so close to the end of our China seminar that although I’d love the trips, I couldn’t wait to take things at my own pace and sleep in a few nights.
