Shanghai is somewhat disappointing. it's actually rather like my pre-conceived notion of what Beijing might be like, 10 yrs from my last visit to China... but it turned out that i found myself liking Beijing a whole lot more. Well, yes, i was mesmerized by the night view at the Shanghai tan1 (The Bund) last night... but other than that, it just feels like it can be potentially any other international city. it's very modern, you see quite a few ppl driving luxury cars... but dunno, it just feels like it doesn't really have much character. i tried to hunt down bits of old Shanghai, but the so-called 'old town/old city' seems rather fake. everything seems catered to tourists... perhaps my most enjoyable experience was looking at antiques at the antique market area.... where tog with those wares you really get to see some old residential buildilngs; the less glamorous bits of the city. but they seem to be disappearing... quite a lot of rubble near these older areas, i guess to make way for the new buildings. quite sad, really. and meeting Warner for dinner and hearing about his interesting encounters in the process of searching for old Shanghai posters for his research was of course another highlight. other than that, ppl really pushing you hard to get in/out of the subway trains, some really bad service at stores and the homogeneity of many areas just made me thankful in a way that i didn't plan to stay for a longer time. hmm dunno. perhaps 1.5 days here wasn't enough for me to really get an accurate picture of what Shanghai's like?