Realizations

Yesterday, while walking around Shanghai, I came to three conclusions.

First, I must look like I know what I’m doing and where I’m going. Over the past few weeks of traveling, I’ve found that most places I go, I get little groups of tourists (both Western and Chinese) discretely following me around, looking for what to do… through the subway, when I go to get in line to buy tickets, through a museum, etc.

I have no idea why. I live in a near constant state of confusion here in China… I think it’s because I walk quickly and with purpose. And I read signs. Most tourists stand around with a map out, spinning in circles… I try not to do that.

Second, I must look like I want to buy stuff. I would estimate that I get approached three times more than the average person on the street about buying fake watches, or roller blade wheels for my shoes, or whatever bizarre crap people are peddling that day. Admittedly, I generally am in the market to buy something, but why on earth would I want some weird light up bird that makes annoying noises and flies around on a plastic string?

 

Finally, and most significantly, I’m not nearly aggressive enough to compete with the Chinese tourists. For some reason I’m uncomfortable with shoving the elderly, children, and women holding babies aside, just to get to the front of the line… or close enough to the glass of the aquarium to see the fish, for example…

I thought I was in for a leisurely day of viewing some lovely marine wildlife at the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium.

Not so much.

 I was literally herded from exhibit to exhibit, trying to avoid getting trampled by families. It was still pretty cool though. The aquarium part, not the part where I was being body checked out of the way so that parents could get pictures of their children in front of every type of fish known to mankind.

I find this to be such a paradox, because if you get on the subway, people become civilized again. An old man gets on, three people get up so that he can have a seat. Pregnant woman? Never has to stand up on the subway. But at tourist destinations, all rules, and apparently manners, are gone. It’s survival of the fittest… And I don’t have the evolutionary drive to want to see any tourist attraction that badly.

Oh, China…