To my english-speaking friends

Well, dear all,

I thought it was time to write you a real post, just for you, the many ones who say to love my pictures but wish you could understand French (it might be better you don't understand sometimes :p )

I am afraid I am loosing my English here in China anyway. I mean, I speak English everyday and all the time, but usually I speak English with people as bad as me in English, or sometimes worst. So I am not improving, and even decreasing because the level here is not high.

You know the kind of situation, here in China, when you have to talk to a local, and you dont speak Chinese enough to make them understand what you need, so you start talking very basic English very loud like : "HOW MUCH for TOMATO, yeah, RED STUFF !", so yeah, this as far as my english goes those days.

At least I am improving on the Mandarin side...

*** woops, just had a break, a scooter accident just happened down on the street, as it happens everyday in Shanghai, and those two Chinese guys are now fighting like in movies with a wide circle of spectators around them. The guys here are very quiet and calm people, but when they get upset they can be very wild ! I remember one day in a carpark area, a passing-by old man walked a bit too close to a very expensive car and perhaps hit it gently with his bag when he got through the two parked vehicles. Then the owner of the car rushed out of a nearby restaurant like a bullet and started screaming at the old man. The poor man was all quiet and apologising while the owner was getting crazy. When he saw that there was nothing to be proved or nothing to get crazy about with this old guy, he when very cold and calm, and reached the other's shirt and tore it saying something like :"you scratch my car I tear your shirt"... according to my Chinese friend nearby.***

Ok, this was a break, but you know here when there is an accident, nothing is done the friendly-way, but the how-to-get-more-money-way. So every little problems always turn to fights, police, crowd watching and noone cares who is right and who is wrong, but who is the first one to stop fighting and paying the other one. That's why as foreigner, if I hit someone with my bike I run away, and if I'm being hit, I run the same, and if someone has problems on the street, i do the same... Because we are supposed to be rich and the fault will automatically fall on us.

ANYWAY, that was not the subject, even if all this accident results in a lot of horns, screams, shouts, which is quite bothering me now at 11.30pm on a monday night.

How should I sum up all what happened to me in nearly 3 months here in Shanghai ? 

First : put all my previous French posts on Google Translate and see what happens, you might not understand but that can be quite funny. I do it all the time from Chinese to French and the result is astonishing !

Second : I do exactly the same thing as in France or anywhere on the planet :

Well, working is not exactly the same, but it involves spending hours on a computer drawing white lines on a black screen and seeing what happens, and if it makes a building out of it I am happy. Believe me or not, I love my job right now, and it gives me a good reason for waking up not too late on the morning.

What I like here in Shanghai is that even routine can be an adventure or turns out to be full of unexpected little stories. Like taking the subway, almost 2 hours per day. I use all this wasted time to read books and avoid the gaze of surrounding Chinese people staring at my foreign face. One would think that in Shanghai they'd get used to it, foreign people are everywhere ! But no... even today a young teenage girl just gasped when she saw me in the sub...

When I say that everything is an adventure... even eating ! Strange things such as jelly-blood, chicken feet, duck neck, and beef guts. And I am not that bad with chopsticks because now I have a three-months training and I can even cut noodles, eat rice very quickly without droping some in my bag and peel potatoes.

And to put an end to this awesome, full of informations, useful post, I really love Shanghai, even if this picture has been taken in Guangzhou. Everyday is a small struggle against a way of life that I dont understand and never will, everyday I want to go back to real life back in Europe, everyday I think Chinese people are not normal and they think the same of me (they must be right, they are more than me...), everyday something unexpected happens, everyday I keep reminding me I am a guest here and will never be part of the country, everyday I find a hundred reasons to love this country and as many reasons to hate it.

Shanghai, you love it or you hate it.

China, you love it or you leave it.

That's what foreign people here say all the time, and I am jumping from one feeling to the other every hour.

So here I am, Shanghai, and if you want to come, I am here for at least a year, so better plan something soon !

Zaijian !

PS: if you express yourself enough on the comments page, or by email (please avoid Facebook...it is difficult enough to reach) or by ANY mean (I loooooove postcards), because you want more of those English posts, I'll write more of them, but you must tell me, otherwise I'll stick to French !