First Impression of Shanghai (Photos) (Video)

This post was extracted from my early NetEase Blog archive. NetEase Blog is no longer operating, but these old words still feel interesting enough to move over mostly as they were. This is mainly for the record, and because of age the writing, images, and links may be rough.

This post was originally published on September 13, 2008. I was about 19 years old then and was in university.

September 13, 2008, 12:42:54 (original)

Carrying heavy travel bags, I boarded the train and headed toward the place where my university was… From the 31st, when I hurried to Shanghai, I had already stayed in this new city for 14 days. Before coming to Shanghai, I always thought Shanghai was a city many times better than my hometown. Only after arriving did I discover that, aside from the taller buildings and higher prices, nothing else here was any different from my hometown. Maybe it is because I have stayed at school the whole time and have not had more time to go out and walk around and understand this new city! Shanghai food is very sweet, so sweet that it makes you a bit unused to it. There are even many classmates who say that in Shanghai even the chili peppers are sweet… Anhui is not very far from Shanghai.

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I still adapted to the food here very quickly. It feels not that different from Anhui.

The only thing I cannot adapt to now is Shanghainese. Here, whether they are Shanghainese or from other places, most people speak Mandarin, but there are also quite a few locals speaking with a strong Shanghainese accent. A considerable number of people speak very, very fast, just like tongue twisters, making you wonder whether they are speaking an alien language… Posting some Shanghainese videos. Can you understand them without subtitles? (Turn off the background music before watching.) Anyway, I cannot understand it. It feels like a foreign language!

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