January 08, 2006

Wind. Flowers. Snow. Moon.

I got to know a Shanghainese on my flight back from my trip some few weeks ago. It was her first time on a plane, first time out of China. So, we sort of made small talk on the flight before I couldn't disguise my sleepy eyes and had to excuse myself to sleep. She's visiting some colleagues (MNC) in Singapore.

I brought her out two days in the 3 weeks that she was here. Actually, just once. The first time she merely tagged along with girl and me on our shopping at Marina.

The last time we met, she told me how she missed Shanghai and was actually looking forward to going back. I would be missing Singapore a lot too if I were away for 3 weeks. However, as I soon found out, her reason was miles different from mine. Mine was a simple and rather superficial reason - I miss the food.

She said she likes Singapore and the multi-cultural society and the weather (she was looking forward to a wamer Christmas compared to a winter one). However, the one thing she found immensely different between Singapore and Shanghai was what she called 'feng hua xue yue'. She quoted an example. In Shanghai, people waiting at the train stations or outside shopping malls really enjoy people watching. When a really good looking guy or gal comes into their vision, they cast intense looks at the person and smile and then, will be reciprocated with a smile from the hunk or babe.

I figured, there is a lot more looking and smiling at good-looking strangers in where she lives. She explained that she found Singapore 'colder', that people seem to exercise more social distance here.

I can't refute that. So, I'm just making a note of it here.

She also mentioned, with laughter, that there's more decadence in Shanghai. This is something I find interesting. The Shanghai people seem, in a strange way, proud of the state of 'decadence' in their city. To them, prosperity and progress is what matters. The next tallest building in the world, the next world record they are breaking, the most this, most that... and it's like their pride. But, I was just thinking, what's the motivation behind all these and most importantly, what's the point of all these?

Maybe we'll talk about it at our coming GID. We, is Shameless, Bionic and moi!

Posted by 杏 cy （Jancy） at 14:32