上海的早晨, trip impressions 2

impressions in my last trip

2) Shanghai,

went to Shanghai from Sanya, attended some meeting in my friend's company, and met another my childhood buddy, who is doing some mechinical manufacturing business in ChangZhou,

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sitting in my hotel room, which is a mere 3 star but I just love the location, sitting on Beijing West and right behind the MeiLongZhen, I looked out of my window and my first reaction was:

"上海...停了?"

there is no construction crane in sight, not one until far far away, and only a handful at far far away... I remember there were hundreds last few times I came,

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one morning I went breakfast in a "tea-house" that used to be quite yuppie, to my surprise there are no more yuppie there but a large group of retired people... the other morning I had breakfast at a little noodle shop, 12 小笼 for only 6RMB, 辣肉面 5RMB, 辣酱面 3.5,

"This", I joked with my friend, "has to be yet another nationalism victory." Local breakfast apparently kicked the ass of the Taiwan-style food stores.

the other reading is that no significant inflation in daily life other than housing/med/tuition expense,

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but even my friends mentioned that they worried about medical expenses, I guess 外企 probably take the best care of their employees, if 私企 it seems a lot on your own,

the other thing is that people's stress level seem to become considerable, quite some young people are postponing to have a child... and often to when they have to work on it. At one dinner table I met with this 3-yr HaiGui who is about to have a baby next month, they had to try it for a long time but the father to be at age of 38 was certainly giddy at the table. They talked about another mutual friend who is also working on baby at age close to 40.

"Look", the HaiGui said, "before you eat anything I have to tell you something", he pointed to the herb hen soup, "last week I was reading newspaper and it said that now there is too much female hormone in chicken breeding materials, and if eating too much chicken, man might have difficult to produce an offspring"

I'm sure he was joking since he knows my friend couple is working on it, but I noticed, at the end of dinner, no man touched the hen soup,