A Typical Shanghai Day

Many of you will wonder what the everyday routine in the volatile and energetic city of Shanghai might look like, and I am going to use this entry to shed some light on the daily cycle in this Far Eastern metropolis.

The sun comes up rather early, and its rays will scorch your retinas somewhere around 6 AM already. You're staggering out of bed, frantically trying to close the blinds, and suddenly realize that seemingly the entire city is already awake; trucks are roaring down the main streets, taxi drivers haggling loudly with clients, and a general noisy business has taken hold of your surroundings. Given the energetic flow around you, you decide to not close the blinds after all and start your day instead. You make yourself some breakfast, which, depending on your taste, can be either entirely Western, or a typical Chinese soup. After you're done eating, you shower and get dressed, and then go out into one of the city parks for a jog or a walk, because, although the city is already vibrant with life, the parks are usually a trifle more calm in the early morning hours, and offer some peace and tranquility in the stressed-out realms of the modern metropolis. Following your walk or jog can be a variety of activities depending entirely on your profession; either you get going to your office, or start working on your projects, or do whatever it is you do to make ends meet. Should you have a free day of course, the morning walk/jog (which I would by the way recommend doing to anyone, it's a good way to stay in shape and start your day positively) will be followed by watching DVDs or movies online, ordering cheap take-out food, and in the evening adjourning to one of the many grill spots in town, where you can finish the day with some extremely tasty street meat, bai jiu, beer, and friendly conversations. The grill spot evenings are naturally not limited to free days, but those evenings do tend to extend themselves until very early the next morning, and having to work that very morning means missing out on the late-night nonsensical fun, simply because you cannot possibly go to work after an all-night drinking and eating binge.

Anyhow. As you may notice it is hard to describe the typical day in Shanghai, which is inherent to what makes the city so great - it's volatility. I cannot possibly describe a typical Shanghai day, because every day in Shanghai is entirely different from the previous one. Now of course there's routine to be found in terms of work or school, where you have your schedules and time-frames, but in terms of leisure and after-work or -school activities, there is no actual consistency; you may have your hobbies and rituals that you take part in on a daily basis, but Shanghai manages to scramble those things up, to get you in spots you haven't been in before that coerce you to improvise, and will make even daily routine seems like an adventure in itself. This is what makes living there so great, no doubt, but it also makes this post lacking in actual description of day-by-day activities, which somewhat defies title and topic, but also shows the degree of alternation which you're subjected to when living in a city like Shanghai, that is an epitome to volatility and the fast-lane kind of life.


Mark