saturday shanghai

Wow! I got back from Shanghai late last night, got so much to tell.. it has been a whirlwind of crazy experiences, some good and some not so good but all very eye-opening!

As I have said previously people over here act very differently in certain circumstances, such as if there were a crime being made in front of them they would just walk on by and mind their own business. I think this is how they have been brought up – to think in a very different state of mind (well very different to me anyway). The ‘right thing’ to do over here is very different to the ‘right thing’ to do in England.

It makes my tummy turn thinking back to what we first witnessed when we arrived at the hotel on Saturday night. We checked in and went up to the sixth floor in the lift, when we got out two men and a lady pushed passed us to enter the lift. As soon as they were out of hearing distance, I commented that the men seemed very aggressive (you know when you just get a bad feeling about someone). We got into our rooms and found lodes of cards on the floor with ladies pictures and telephone numbers – I felt like I was in a brothel! I quickly chucked them and started unpacking in our very strong cigarette smelling room. After a while we heard very angry tones of voices outside our room, when we looked out a man was shouting at a woman and had chucked everything out of her bag onto the floor. Don’t want to go into too much detail but basically he took her into the room they were staying and we heard him beating her, it was the most horrible thing I have ever heard and we all felt so helpless. The guard came but he was the most hopeless, useless, weedy man and seemed scared himself. Nothing could have been done.

I think with all the amazing things we have seen there will inevitably be the bad.  I don’t think it would be fair if I just wrote about the good because life isn’t perfect, you have to see everything as a learning curve and use it positively. Maybe be more aware of what is around you and try and do the right thing. This kind of thing happens everywhere in the world but I guess it is more accepted here – even though maybe the laws are set, the beliefs of the people are different. In this country people are led to believe women should look up to men, and sadly this even still happens in England, such as with jobs and wages sexes earn.