Life and Travel in China

I'm leaving tomorrow for the "Venice of China", near Shanghai. It is such a charming village surrounded by canals and lakes. Apparently there are many old buildings, ancient bridges, and even hotels are located in ancient tenement houses. Of course I will bring lots of photos! Let's just hope the weather is good, because it's not very nice at the moment.

This weekend I visited Shanghai and, by the way, the 'Chinese Venice', i.e. ZhouZhuang. We were a bit disappointed with this supposed Venice. We were supposed to spend the night there, but the guest room was not clean. I don't expect much, it doesn't have to be a 4-star hotel, but it has to be at least clean. We escaped on the last bus to civilization, to Shanghai, to a hotel near Cheng Huang Miao. The next day, ZhuJiaJiao is also a historic village connected by a network of water canals. Moreover, in Shanghai I visited two famous temples and an interesting museum, as well as the traditional promenade and Nanjing Road. Of course, I brought hundreds of new photos!

I accidentally came across an English-language website devoted to friendship. Photos, profiles, common interests. There are a lot of girls from China there. Their photos have captions like: "Hi, sometimes I come to Shenzhen", "Hey, I'm also in Shanghai, maybe...". There would be nothing strange about it, but these are often grandparents from the USA, Turkey or Egypt. They come here sometimes or have been living here for some time and are looking for free sex. In general, I see that more and more young girls in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hong Kong 'fall in love' with the wallets of older men, whether Chinese or foreigners. Actually, I feel sorry for ordinary Chinese guys who don't have much capital, so they don't have a girlfriend. And yet there are many more men here. This means that wealthy people who have, for example, a wife and two mistresses take away more potential partners from the average man. China will one day have a serious problem with gender balance, fidelity, venereal diseases and an army of former prostitutes.

Last night I received information from my wife that the tallest skyscraper in Shanghai and therefore in China is practically ready. We took photos there a week ago and it was still under construction. Now they discovered scaffolding and netting, and suddenly the Shanghai World Financial Center appeared. It is to be ready in 2008, according to the Internet, but the construction is already finished. The furnishings and finishing inside will probably remain.

Yesterday, a banana seller was running away from the intersection with his mobile stall because the police suddenly appeared. Another time I saw security destroying such a stall. And I'm thinking... maybe they'll take care of the old women who offer prostitutes in the middle of the street near the border with Hong Kong. Recently, this mom was chasing me on the sidewalk, shouting "missi, massagi", and two cops were standing two meters away from her. She didn't care about it at all. They even write on business cards "New delivery of virgins" - unfortunately this is sometimes true. Rural girls who cannot find work take up such activities. They get little for each number, and they can have 20 such numbers a day. Most of the money goes to pimps and women who solicit customers. Let the police deal with it! But why, after all, they get their money from this, but not from bananas! Let me remind you that prostitution is punishable by death. If these regulations were enforced, the population in cities would probably decrease by 10%-20%.