Shanghai: First Impressions

I’ve only been in Shanghai for a bit and have just about got over jet lag. I ended up doing an all-nighter last night, taking some night shots of the cityscape from my (highly elevated) bedroom window and watching the smoggy sunrise in awe, just to get my sleep-cycle right and ended up snoring through a Chinese music concert in the evening – oops… So, first impressions.

Immediately after touchdown, the first thing to greet my sleep-deprived eyes was a colourful and gleeful rendering of the cheerful glory of an olympic host, painted onto the side of a member of the China Airlines fleet. Up till now, that remains the only apparent relic I’ve seen of last Summer’s excitement.

Beijing 2008 Advert

As I expected, apart from the airport which was magnificent and unbelievably (to a Londoner) efficient (somewhat different from dear old Heathrow), there are aspects of this place which are somewhat … different. The most striking part is probably the population density. Officially Shanghai has a population of about 20 million, although I suspect that figure is a gross underestimate owing to the number of homeless and unregistered civilians living in this district. With such a population squashed into only 6500 square Km, the city has over 3000 people per square kilometre. Not bad one might think, but the crowds are multitudinous and dense. It is a result of this crowd culture that Chinese people get their (deserved) loud reputation. Even in the most serene places, people will communicate at top volume, choosing to shout rather than to talk normally so as to be heard. Walking around just about anywhere constitutes shoving your way through a throng of people – which itself wouldn’t be so bad if they were normal people. The sad fact is that every person here, without exception, appears to be dying of some disease or other and every line of sight seems to end in someone spluttering, coughing and/or blowing his nose into the air. Hygiene awareness when coughing and sneezing (often while cooking) is approximately zero – bodily fluids/gases exit bodily orifices liberally into the open air without thought or care for anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. Combined with such a high person to square kilometre ratio and you end up with a fantastic disease spread rate. The smoking situation is also quite chronic. The taxi from the airport reeked blatantly of cigarette smoke. Crowds emit smoke puffs as you push your way through and buildings stink of nicotine. Oh, did I mention the pollution? Don’t get me started on the smog.

typical crowded street

my photo of the iconic view of Shangai showing smog

me cynically photographing more smog

Meanwhile, the traffic is absolutely manic. Shanghai is very much a biking city (electric scooters and bicycles are much cheaper than cars), and such vehicles, when combined with a cavalier disregard for pedestrians, traffic lights and other road users, make for quite deadly weapons. Crossing the road is like waging a war. Seas of pedestrians from both sides of the road meet in the middle in a cacophony of shouting, bustling, coughing and spitting while being constantly punched through by honking road bikes and the occasional impatient taxi. Sometimes there’s a policeman in the middle of it all pretending to direct traffic (both pedestrian and vehicular). There are effectively no real rules for the road. Cars cut lanes and cross junctions at full speed without warning or looking around, and diesel motorbikes frequently mount pavements, pushing aside pedestrians. My dad while he was here personally bore witness to an accident in which an infelicitous pedestrian was hit by a car whose driver just drove off, without care for whatever mess he had left behind. You’d think people would at least take out some sort of physical insurance against such a dangerous road situation, but it seems that taxis deliberately disable seatbelts (the ones I’ve been in have had them ripped out and covered over with cloth).

My camera can only do max 4 second exposure. This is the result

no seatbelt

When most people think of the police, the first two words that jump to mind tend to be ‘law’ and ‘bastards’, often in reverse order. In China, things are very different. During my very first trip to the market I saw a policeman grab an item from a shop and stroll away calmly with the ill-fated shopkeeper running after him, tugging his arm. They are far from law, but they sure are bastards. There are no rules, no morals, and few properly enforced civil rights laws (thoughtcrime law on the other hand…) – the police are just bullies with sticks and uniforms (and guns).

As far as first impressions go, the internet actually isn’t bad. I’m using the [still censored] connection in my dad’s apartment (he works in Shanghai) and the upload speed is faster than what Virgin Media give me back home in good old London. The download speed, about 1Mbps, is still one tenth what I get in London, which is still perfectly ample for surfing. Remote desktop on the other hand is torturous. I’m still worried about thoughtcrime and censorship, and since my blog is on the blocklist (well, all wordpress blogs are, I think) I’m typing this up on Notepad and subsequently posting it through remote desktop.

There are though good things about Shanghai. I’m overdramatising the bads a bit as, well, that’s what I do as a cynic. But the prices are undeniably good and conversion is convenient (10Y = £1 almost exactly). Stuffed bao (sort of buns) go for 10p in the supermarket, and clothes prices beat Primark hands down. The underground actually works (unlike London), and there are some great photos to be taken, particularly night shots while I’m recovering from my jet lag.

my attempt at night photography without a tripod

So, that’s what I think of Shanghai after about 3 days. Brilliant place, though a little crazy. If you want me to test some websites to see if they’re blocked, do comment / contact!

Surviving Black Ice on Bike

I present you with my new God Hypothesis: if and only if God exists, he is far from benevolent. It would appear the legendary Pure Mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy agrees: “Another example of [Hardy] trying to fool God was when he went to cricket matches he would take what he called his “anti-God battery”. This consisted of thick sweaters, an umbrella, mathematical papers to referee, student examination scripts etc. His theory was that God would think that he expected rain to come so that he could then get on with his work. Since Hardy thought that God would then have the sun shine all day to spite him, he would be able to enjoy the cricket in perfect sunshine” (Toller made me aware of this; quotation taken from here). God, in order to spite me, over the last two weeks has strategically placed black ice in exactly the same spot of road causing me to fall spectacularly on both occasions causing grievous (= light) damage to my elbow followed by my face, as some sort of obscene joke.

Click for original image

In fairness I shouldn’t be blaming some being who was invented a long time ago and exists solely in books. The real reason is that my bike’s tyres were worn almost smooth by regular trips to Richmond Park over the Summer and Autumn. But as Winter is setting on, a relatively high tyre pressure (pumped up in the hope of improved speeds) and non-grippy road (rather than mountain-biking) tyres are hardly ideal for the conditions. So I decided to do some research on how not to die at the hands of Winter, squashed between a bus and a centimetre of ice. I’ve organised my incoherent thoughts into a list of tips for anyone who is, like me, foolish enough to attempt to overcome whatever God throws at him, including icy road conditions. Since my expertise with ice cycling is evidently somewhat lacking, I’ve nicked half of these from different sources.

Technique

Keep upright and turn slowly

Both times I fell it was because P was too great; too great to be resisted by friction (F). To minimise this you want to minimise the torque created by N and W, i.e. minimise the angle theta: keep as vertical as possible as increased torque increases the effect of P. You also need to slow down (as Dr Zetie has just taught us, centripetal acceleration v^2/r where r is the curve radius and in this case it is provided by friction – if friction isn’t enough to resist the centrifugal force created by high-speed turns, God wins and you fall). I’ll shut up about Physics now.

Brake gently

This might seem obvious but it’s actually even worse than you might think. Friction with the ice when braking melts some of it creating water, which on ice is amazingly ‘fail’ at friction. Bad.

Brake with rear wheel

When you brake, torque makes the bike lean on its front wheels, so if that front wheel locks you’re screwed. Don’t brake with it. Braking with the rear wheel is also great for skidding down icy hills (apparently).

Let the bike get it

If it does come to it and you’re about to crash, a friend of mine advises you just throw the bike at whatever you’re going to hit and either land on it or hit the ground at a much reduced velocity. Not sure how good this advice is, but it’s probably a good idea on the personal safety front. Maybe not for other road users or indeed the bike…

It’s also better to get scrapes than go head-first into a solid object – I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure grazes heal faster than fractures.

Ride the gravel

There tends to be a load of crap at the side of roads, especially gravel which is great for cyclists when the rest of the road resembles an ice-rink. Snow is also better than ice.

Kit out your bike

Use studded tyres

These are the best tyres for grip in icy conditions. Also consider chaining your tyres.

Click for original image

Lifehacker also did a post on it.

Also, slightly underinflating car tyres helps for low-grip surfaces. Presumably the same applies for bikes, especially for wide tyres.

Dress for the Arctic

Wear an anti-God outfit complete with crash-helmet so you’ll just bounce if you hit the road.

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Hopefully when I try (most of) this next week I won’t die in the process. And don’t blame me if you do attempt it all and still get hit by a bendy-bus after skidding into the middle of a road.

Most of these ideas and images came from here.

Click for original image

The depressing state of transport in London

The transport situation in London has always been a disgrace. But the thing that has caught my attention recently is the sad situation for the few people hard-core (or stupid) enough to mount a bike and brave the streets of London alone and without protection just in order to save the environment (or a few pennies).

On many an occasion I have attemted to get from point A to point B in London within an acceptable amount of time. These numerous occasions have frequently left me disappointed to say the least, and more than a little stressed.

It is always said London is full of history. But nothing can convey the meaning of that better than living in the city itself. Everything about London is Victorian. The technology used for congestion charging (taking photos of cars and getting monkeys to write down number plates) is Victorian and that used for the tube is Medieval.

Let me try to explain what goes through my mind whenever I plan a journey. Walking is out of the question – it would take forever and be about as good for my lungs as smoking ten cigarettes at the same time, not to mention the broken bones from being run over. Driving in London is equally dangerous, this time owing to the risk of high blood pressure, lateness and the associated anger caused, and the occasional desperate idiot on the road and the associated dangers. The tube is out of the question; just listen to the surprised note in the announcers’ voices whenever they declare there is a ‘good service on the District Line’. The only alternative is cycling which I only began considering recently and almost immediately dropped as an alternative since London is built to combine quite neatly all its crap into a single vehicle. The second you venture onto the street you are honked at by some 18-wheeler accelerating towards you like in Duel while simultaneously verbally abused by a cigarette-smoking idiot gesturing at you while overtaking on the inside lane. While you swerve to avoid the greater of the two evils you are run over by a bendy bus and end up in hospital. After you recover you discover your bike to be stolen and receive a fine for swerving into a bus lane, and to add further insult to injury you discover pieces of your bike (or perhaps it in its entirety) to be stolen. Finally you die at the age of thirty of lung cancer. Such is the life of a cyclist in London.

Fortunately I note steps are already being taken to counter this. London is currently being made such a miserable place to drive in that no driver in his or her right mind would even dare to venture within its labyrinth. Such a mess of one-way systems has been created that one might run out of petrol before finding a way out, and the designing of the parking system has been delegated to a person sufficiently intelligent to understand how a phone can be used to run a pay service but not quite smart enough to grasp the idea of actually providing that service (to any acceptable standards). I applaud these changes and hope to see London clear of all traffic by 2012; I guarantee if things continue as they are, this vision will become a reality.