Today is my 1 month ‘anniversary’ of moving back to Shanghai.
Why do I choose to live in Shanghai? The most direct and perhaps a bit shallow answer will be. There is no reason to live in another city so far. It is near my home town; I have a lot of friends here; it is the most advanced city in China; it has full of opportunities and is mixed of interesting people; it has everything you need and want.
Do I love to stay here? Instead of answering this question, I think I should share with you my story first.
Almost 2.5 years ago, I joked with my local friends, “I am always waiting for my Mr. Right helping me to escape”. The truth is, that I did escape but by myself, and I lived in England for 2 years. There was a particular moment in the past months I felt so strongly that I may move to somewhere else with someone I cared very much, no matter where. However, my fate finally brought me back.
My Shanghai story began in 2002. I remember exactly how I felt on the first day I put my feet on the DLR No.3 (at that time it was called the Pearl Line) with tons of luggages, staring at the skyscrapers through the windows. “Oh, gosh, it is Shanghai” I said to myself, “a dreamed city in everybody’s heart”. However, sooner after I settled down in my school, I found I was overwhelmingly depressed when walking under the elevated express ways outside of our univ’s main door. I hated no blue sky on the days nor the shining stars at nights. People rushed by and pushed each other during the peak time on the road, in the bus or on the tube etc. I felt I was invisible. There were extremely few plants or parks nearby. Everything was expensive. 1 year’s late, I got used to the environment.
I am NOT an urban animal but I chose to stay in Shanghai after graduation purely because I had a job here which was highly paid among peers at that time (perhaps also because my favourite pop star often had concerts in Shanghai ^^) and I’ve obtained local “Hukou” – the chance of getting a top-rank city’s Hukou nowadays is as rare as having a PR in a developed country. (You will hear the phrase “Hu Kou” mentioned frequently in China. It stands for a administration system of origins, basically managing the mobility of large population. It of course has advantages and disadvantages. For instance, you are able to enjoy some favourite local policies in education, welfare, or you have fewer chance to work for State Owned Companies if you carry a non-local Hu Kou/origin. Another example is you will NOT have the qualifications to apply for the personal tourism visa of Taiwan if you are non-Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen Hukou). The development of each areas in China are so unbalanced and people either live in their home towns or struggle to move to developed cities and may stick there forever.
The word “reality” was so powerful then, that I sacrificed the relationship with my first boyfriend who got a job in his home town, a 3-tier city nearby and did not want to move back to Shanghai. He thought the life in Shanghai would be tough but I thought it would be challenging and exciting. (Fundamentally, we were so young to take the responsibility of our own decisions. These decisions were so essential that would alter our life paths completely. It is not like you move from London to Basingstoke.)
Why did I think life in Shanghai would be challenging and exciting?
1. Convenient: you could get almost everything you need even in the mid night. Convenience stores open 24 hours. Department stores, supermarkets, grocery stores, and open markets are almost every where. Utility services and their help lines works 24 hours. Most banks (service line is available 24 hrs) and post offices are open and all transportations function during the weekends and holidays. It has one of the most sophisticated tube maps in China. The 2 airports in Shanghai connect directly to major cities in the world.
2. Advanced: Shanghai has an admiring city infrastructure, with world-class technologies embedded, such as meg-lev train (well, I personally do not think it is a wise investment though). Shanghai picks up global cutting edge technologies and accepts and adapts advanced concepts quickly. Take a look at the high buildings there. You won’t agree it is the China in the movies you saw or books you read.
3. Synchronised with the rest of the world: fashion, art, entertainment, and even iPhones are keeping up with the global trends. You can easily find international big brands here in Shanghai in any of the big department stores.
4. Colourful night life: Shanghai used to be called “A City Never Sleeps” in 1930s. I guess it inherited the old traditions and pushed it further. Neon, bars, clubs, Karaoke, and restaurants composed many sleepless nights.
5. Full of opportunities: Many MNCs’ head offices were moved from Hong Kong or Singapore to Shanghai. There are more job openings and higher salary in Shanghai than anywhere else (maybe except for Beijing, Guangzhou/Shenzhen). It is also a place providing plenty of learning opportunities, such as foreigner languages, art and design, and university education programmes etc.
6. Safe and clean: Generally I say Shanghai is pretty safe. You don’t need to worry about walking in a quiet street in the mid night whether you will get robbed. The city also employs full time cleaners everywhere. Nevertheless, Shanghai has to give its way to the economy index as many other developed cities do in China. It has to some degree illy polluted – dusty and foggy, but is still much better than Beijing.
It seems I should pretty cherish my life but why do I sound unsatisfied?
Here is the story continued. Catching up with the rhythm of a fast moving big city, I often found myself purely tired mentally, lonely emotionally, and lost finally. With the increasing price level, many people repeat only one line “we need to make more money”. They don’t care about people around and the environment. They do not have time to do the things they love. They don’t feel like talking or smiling. Every day they walk on the roads or stand in the tubes with tiring eyes like a walking deadly. (Here again, there are no statistics indicating the percentage of such people in the society and I don’t want to generalise either. The only thing I know is quite a few friends of mine feel the same way. However, being a walking deadly does not mean they are unsatisfied. I could not be very objective on this perspective because this is how I perceive the world around me. It is connected to my personalities, feelings and self-perception. So, it is possible that such perception is totally incorrect for someone else.)
I was one of them and felt unhappy. There were mixed of personal reasons. I could barely recall any happy moments during 2006-2009. My soul was fairly empty and my lifestyle was entirely sick, staying at home pathetically and feeling scared and hurt, and complaining everything. There was a time when I seriously considered what my lifetime objectives would be and how I wanted to lead my life. Afterwards, I escaped alone!
When approaching the day of moving back, I unfortunately fell into the same old mood circle for quite a while full of anxiety and fear, but finally I refused to become one of them again.
<it is very late now. I am writing with my tiring eyes, trying to be quick>
Shanghai has all the good sides big cities do and bad sides too. I do think the crucial thing of making a living is how you want your life to be. It doesn’t really matter where you are or how many good policies/services you can enjoy, but it matters how you feel. It is truely unavoidable that we can get influenced or often annoyed by so called common values (I may discuss these in the future) in the society which sometimes are actually rubbish. Still, the choice of being happy or pathetic is in my hands even under the same circumstances. My life counts on my heart really, being with or without some one. At the end of the day, “you are the person you will never lose”.
I am not sure if my old joke still stands, but I don’t think there is any need to escape or to have someone to save me. I may choose to stay or leave (not “escape”) in the future pursuing the desired happiness.
End up my post with a movie line:
“where are you?” – here
“what’s the time?” – now
– peaceful warrior
Below is a link to photos I took randomly in Shanghai. Enjoy!
Random photos taking in Shanghai
amazing moments purely artwork of light and shadow designed by natural master's hand.
While Away from Home 
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