On the river at night and a study in contrasts

There will also be some strange but interesting Shanghai miscellany and a fiber mention in passing.

Ariana commented on the bride's dress in my previous post, asking if Western culture had taken over to the point where white was no longer the color of mourning. I think Western culture has taken over to a large extent. I see ads with brides dressed in Western style dresses. I don't know if they wear traditional colors for the wedding with white dresses for the reception or if they wear white. The other thing to remember is that there are Christians here and they may very well wear white for their weddings. In India, Christian brides typically wear white sarees, even though Hindu brides do not wear white.

We went out to dinner the other night and took the ferry across the river at night. Some of the older Shanghai areas have been made into nice little oases with restaurants. One of these is now labeled the Cool Docks.

The pool/fountain in the middle is surrounded by restaurants. There is a nice Indian restaurant here and that is where we had dinner. It was a very pleasant evening so we sat outside.

The Shanghai skyline is well lit at night and many buildings have light patterns that move across their faces.

This is the Pudong skyline from the Puxi side of the river. You can see the Oriental Pearl Tower to the left and the Shanghai World Financial Center (aka the can opener building) on the right.

I also took a movie, hoping to show some of the light patterns. It is about a minute long. I'm not sure I was able to capture it properly but you can hear the water as the ferry moves away from the dock and then a little of the Puxi skyline also. For some reason, it wouldn't upload into here so I have linked it.

Shanghai also has a huge economic divide. There is a new, very tall building going up next to my office building. It is taller than all the other buildings in Shanghai. Work goes on 24/7. The construction crew comes to work on bicycles.

They are stacked up around the corner.

And a few blocks away...

with a...

next door to it. My office building has a Jaguar dealership on the ground level. Note that there are a number of cars in the showroom, ready to drive.

Every corner has bicycles chained to the railing between the pavement and the road. Lots of motorbikes and scooters too. And of course, lots of cars.

One also comes across quirky things in Shanghai. First a painted bus I walked by coming home from work.

Next a painted utility box near my apartment.

It is not like all the boxes are painted. Look at the bicycle picture above and you'll see a utility box that looks like a utility box.

Last but not least, there are swarms of window washers and painters who keep all the glass clean from the outside. They ride up and down on scaffolds which look reasonably safe to me as long as they are kept horizontal. I think I can handle being this high up, though. :-)

They are cleaning the outside of our apartment building also. At least that is why I found this sign in the elevator.

But why it was in the elevator, I don't know. One tends not to question these things, but just to enjoy them as one comes across them.

And as promised, a passing fiber reference. I have been knitting slowly on the handspun shawl. I am about half way through the lace section now. It gets easier so I hope to finish it soon. I had a few problems with a couple of the rows that involved a bit of tinking and counting and fudging. That took time.

The fiber gets very fuzzy very quickly so I don't know how nice the shawl will look after a bit of use. But it was a freebie fiber and the shawl colors are pretty.