Arrival

So on the 2nd of July I finally arrived at Shanghai Pu Dong airport at 6:30 am local time after a long and sleepless flight. Birmingham to Zurich was a little cramped inside the bright pink plane, and I was a little worried that it wouldn't be going at all as the boarding desks didn't open until half an hour before it took off. Zurich airport is surprisingly massive and the duty free shops are nearly all chocolate shops It's a pity that they only take Swiss Franks, otherwise I could have given them some good business. Then came the long flight from Zurich to Shanghai. For about 20 seconds after getting on the plane I was actaully looking forawrd to it and was impressed that I would be flying in nice suade seats with plenty of leg room. And then I realised that I'd just walked through business class. My seat, which had significatly less leg room, was in the second row in from the front of the economy class, but when the man in front of me realised that he couldn't recline his seat because of my legs he kindly swapped, giving me about an extra 10cm but, more importantly, a wall that I could push against. I tried to get some sleep, but it wasn't working, so instead I made advantage of the in-flight entertainment: Charlie Wilson's War; Definitely, Maybe; a documentary about the making of The Bird's Nest in Beijing (the architects are Swiss); an eppisode of Top Gear; and a 'learn Mandarin' game, where I just about managed to learn the numbers from 0 to 9999. So much for learing the entire language like I'd planned.

The heat and humidity of Shanghai hits you straight away. Unfortunately for me, I arrived on the second day of a heatwave, with average temperatuers exceeding 35 degrees. After touching down at 6:30 am, smoothly passing though customs and getting my rucksack I was sped along the 30km Maglev track from the airport to the edge of the city centre at 380km/h. The Maglev is the fastest train in the world and between 9:30 and 18:00 its top speed is 450km/h. Thankfully, it's also fully air-conditioned. Then I got on the underground, a single ticket to go to the other side of the city costing only 30p. This is when I really noticed my height advantage: there are no doors separating the underground train carrages, and even during rush hour when every carrage was chock-a-block I could see a forest of arms and hands holding onto the handles above for as far as the eye could see in either direction with not a single head getting in the way. I must have looked very odd. I got off at Jing' An Temple and then found a taxi to take me to Da's (a friend from AC) flat. I tried to ask how much it would be, fearing I'd get ripped off if we didn't agree a price, but he couldn't speak any English what-so-ever. Fortunately, it turns out that during the day time every taxi in the city charges only 90p for the first 2km, and then about 10p extra for every couple of hundred metres after that. With such cheap public transport, it seems everybody wants to use it, meaning sometimes you have to wait about 15 minutes just to hail one down, by which time you might have been able to walk there. That's if you can bear the heat. When I reached Da's place on the 12th floor I dumped my stuff in my room and a very sweaty Hedd headed straight to the bathroom for a much needed shower.