Shanghai Nights
Here’s a nice little reflection on my adventures in Shanghai, written a few months ago around the time I was getting my Russian visa and rubbing elbows with the underworld on a nightly basis.
Shanghai, as it always has been, is an experience.
To summarize: my first time in Shanghai I was sick and coughing up blood before I passed out in the Hostel lounge. Second time I spent most of my late evenings on the street, occasionally striking up conversation with pimps and whores. This, my third time, I’m getting a deeper view of the SH underworld after undertaking a quest to recover a stolen camera.
The pimps are very helpful (so much that the Chinese saying ‘behind every smile is a knife’ stays close to the front of my mind) and it’s humorous that after three nights talking with groups of them for hours I recognize most of the working guys on the street (and they, me). One of them even introduced us to a man of influence (to put it subtly) who was willing to make some commission-based inquiries on our behalf.
Chances of recovering the camera seem bleak, but I have the strong impression that it depends more on how rogue the thief was than anything. If nothing else, I think I know some people who would know a good place to get "second hand" cameras.
To bring things back to the present day, the camera was never recovered, though I DID learn a new scam. Always nice to have some ways to make extra money while traveling ^_-.
