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Pop, pop, pop (ears just went) Pop, pop,pop (feeling slightly giddy now) Pop pop pop (bodies shifting weight on feet and slightly swaying) Pop, crackle pop (too hot, and claustrophobic) LET ME OUT!
21 people emerge from the tiny lift, 80 floors and over 600m later to be welcomed by the skyscraper skyline of modern Shanghai. To me...Fish fingers which jut from the ground sticking it to the sky, the crowning glory of commercial success.
Our day includes a visit to Yu Gardens, a breath taking spectacle mixing with 400 year old sculpture. I must sadly confess being the true cultural buff that I am was most interested in the fact that had put a Starbucks in a 400 year old building, and the coffee was.... Apart from crap milk rather ok!
Next stop... Hangpu River Cruise.... sun tan special i20' heat.
Our final stop for the day was the Bund, the central shopping distract and commercial centre of Shanghai and... Everything I hate about a modern Asian city! It just feels wrong. In a brief 30 mins interval I had the channel to stop being a grown up and go explore.
I went straight for the back streets and there i found what I was looking for.
Tiny crowded streets, not a single westerner in sight. Row upon disheveled row of cluttered, squashed and completely chaotic street vendors. The market was dirty, the air heavy, sweat coating the growing masses as they jostle and squeeze through the bottlenecks. The stalls were like rotting tomatoes oozing their wares across the grounds like over ripened seeds, the paths sticky with their fluids and juices.
Fish splash the unsuspecting, victims alike in a last struggle for survival; Gills gaping for life giving nourishment fighting to stay out of someone's noodle bowl.
Guilt laden glares stare from empty sockets as regiments of limp necked ducks gaze on in angry salute, their time on this earth so recently concluded.
A wriggling mass of eels squirm in horrific torment the making of a childhood nightmare. Who. Would dare to eat that!
The smell is horrific, a nauseating aftershave of fish entrails, rotten produce and body odour all brought to the boil in the humidity.
An old man, skin falling from bone with impossible wrinkles sits astride a two and a bit legged stool carving patterns in what looks like a giantmutated asparagus. Flies throng the air like locusts with man and beast alike swatting to avoiding their attentions.
This is Asia,
Can sleep happy tonight now.
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