24 hours of daylight

Today started yesterday. At 6am eastern US time the sun rose. At 7pm a day later in Shanghai, it set. The 24 hours in between was travel. The plane ride was very long and uneventful, and it was overcast (undercast) most of the way, so there wasn't much to look at. But in Shanghai, there is too much to look at. In a word, Shanghai is insane. So many sights, sounds, and smells attack you at once that all you can do is stare and keep looking around. And everything is moving. Fast.

The taxi ride from the airport to the Fudan campus is 45 minutes of white-knuckle driving. Think Boston driving plus bikes, mopeds, and pedestrians, all of whom seem to have the right of way at the same time. Minus seatbelts. One incident sums it up: our driver takes us through an intersection at about 30 miles an hour, threading the needle between two groups of pedestrians in the crosswalk. On each side of the van, no more than 2 feet away are one or two bicycles. Other cars are also going through the intersection on the road perpendicular to us, slowing down about as much as our driver did. Nobody seems upset or even surprised by the fact that there were just about 15 narrowly avoided accidents inside of a second and a half. I look back at the intersection, looking for something to explain what just happened. I saw no signs, and no traffic lights. That explains it.

Since Nora, Tara, and I arrived a day earlier than the school expected us to, we're staying in a hotel on the edge of campus tonight, and moving into the foreign students dorms tomorrow. I have a double hotel room and a bathroom to myself. The Chinese students across the street sleep 7 per dorm room. More on that later... probably.

Anyway, Professor Ferry picked us up at the airport, took us to the hotel, and out to dinner. Next week will be mostly exploration and settling in... buying whatever we'll need and so on. I spoke Chinese to a real chinese person: "this one is mine," pointing to my suitcase, and he understood.

I think that will be all for now. I didn't take any pictures yet... a little too much for today. The city is dimly lit where Fudan is anyway. Tomorrow maybe there will be pictures.