SurvivingTwo Wheeler Power in Shanghai

Nowadays you can read about how quickly the number of cars in China is growing and how less and less people use bicycles. I thought that this is a good time to share with you one of my hobbies: making photographs of two wheelers used for freight. Here in Shanghai you see many of these, I have tried to look them up in statistics but there you will not find them.

A Sunday afternoon stroll to the park!

This afternoon L. had been invited for a lunch with colleagues and since the weather forecast was good (0% change on rain and about 23 degrees Celsius) I decided to realize an old ambition and to go for a walk to Century Park. We live about 10 kilometer from the Huangpu River on the west side, Century Park is a couple of kilometers on the other side. All in all a walk of about 17 - 18 kilometer I think.

I took off at 11.00 in the morning.

It was encouraging to read after about 45 minutes that I should keep dreaming.

The decoration on the side-walks kept me busy.

Retail in Shanghai does not always follow the model from elsewhere. Why not buy a pair of shoes when you are buying a new pot for the kitchen.

If you walk enough, you will also lose weight, and not a little. When I weighed myself after I came back I had lost a little over a kilo. Maybe I did not walk enough.



I see complicated structures to keep up the traffic lights and to keep the pedestrians of the streets while crossing.



Then after 2 hours I can see Pudong (the other side of the river). I also realize that weather forecasts are as unreliable as in other parts of the world when it begins to rain.




After 2 hours I cross the Huangpu River, time to take shelter from the rain and admire the view.



Yes, it was still raining, but who cares! How many times in my life do I walk to Century Park and the air is far cleaner with the rain than without.




Others take it far less serious this afternoon than me when it comes to exercise I notice.



False alarm, the green spot across the road is NOT Century park. It seems that the guy on motor cycle knows that.

Then, after 3 hours and 40 minutes and several blisters on my feet this time the real thing!
CENTURY PARK!!!!




HURRAY!!!

No smoking please - Tokyo style

(After a lot of traveling I am back in Shanghai, this time for a month. This will enable me to improve the frequency of postings on my blog I hope!)


There has been a lot of controversy recently in the Netherlands on the smoking bans in bars and restaurants. I was quite surprised to see on a recent trip to Tokyo that they had gone a step further than that by imposing a ban on smoking in public. Smoking is now confined to specific smoking areas.

The local government has also put various posters to inform the public on the danger of smoking outdoors. Strangely enough there are still a lot of coffee shops, bars and restaurants which still have very large smoking areas. It makes you wonder about the priorities they have in Tokyo.