Up In The Sky

During the last visit, I didn't go up to the top of the Shanghai World Financial Centre (SWFC, 上海环球金融中心). It's kinda known as the 'can opener'. The story behind the 494.4m tall building by a Japanese conglomerate is juicier than its statistics and numbers as SWFC surpasses the pride of the city that's the 421m tall Jin Mao Tower (金茂大夏). Well, the Shanghai Tower (上海中心大厦) is currently under construction, right next to these 2 urban monoliths. When completed in 2014, its spire will hit 632m. This visit, the bff and I decided to take the man to SWFC.

One reason why we like Shanghai so much during Lunar New Year is because it's so empty. It makes the city so much more pleasant. At SWFC, The man experienced the full shoving and pushing of the Chinese (domestic) tourists who were loud, obnoxious and wouldn't hesitate to push us.  I always believe that 'kiasu-ism' probably originated from China where many Chinese Singaporeans' ancestors come from. (And that's not to say that Singaporeans are well-behaved. We're not.)

There were long queues of tourists clogging up the entry points and long waits for the lift. At the security gantry where there was only space for one, one annoying idiot pushed my shoulder to try to get past me. Hey! I'm way thinner and still, there isn't space. You think you can get through? I said firmly, “别推啊！”  He had the audacity to retort, “我就是推，怎么样？” Before I could decide whether to expend energy to scold him, the security guards came round to tell him to get behind me and queue in line. HA! None of us took it lying down. We shoved back as good as it got and told off a number of humans who tried to elbow us in the lift. HALLO, we're IN the lift; not going anywhere till we hit the 97th floor. The ushers at SWFC were soooo good. They were authoritative and firm; refused to allow the humans to skip the queue or overpack the lift. Many actually didn't think it was a problem to push more than the permitted 20 humans into one lift.

We took the man up 100 storeys to the Sky Walk and let him merrily skip across the glass. Since he's the newbie to China, it was one way of showing him the city from another point of view. It was a sunny day, but it was so close to sunset when we finally went up.  We probably caught the last 15 minutes of daylight before it turned dark. Wheww.