Kiwi reflects on startling Shanghai contrasts (2)

There was also the time I mispronounced Weihai Lu as Huaihai Lu to a taxi driver, and the time I found myself stranded in Pudong, one hour from the office, with only 2 kuai (yuan) to my name. Surprisingly, only the former (stranding in Pudong) ended in tears.

And sometimes, the very colorful chaos of East meets West that made me love Shanghai in the first place got too much. A trip to the Yuyuan Garden on a public holiday, for instance, was a truly horrible experience.

The crowds full of people spitting, shop owners selling tacky toys and tourists taking photos of me became too much, and I ended up aborting my adventure.

But while my impression of Shanghai is that of a world of endless possibilities - with a few mostly language-related frustrations - it soon began eminently clear that my experience was not that of most people living in Shanghai.

As an example, I stayed with friends living in a lane house where we were never short of space. But barely 50 meters away, an elderly woman was living in a dirty shed. In lieu of a living room, she sat on the street, dozing off in her wicker chair.

When I went for a coffee at the nearby Wagas, located beneath designer brand shops, I passed a woman begging, with amputated legs. While I jaunted around in taxis, excitedly calculating how cheap they were in New Zealand dollars, most people were in the oppressive crush of the Metro on their long commute home. It was certainly a wake-up call that though I might be living a life more stimulating and crazy than my life in New Zealand, some people were much worse off.

But ultimately, those contrasts are what I love most about Shanghai, what keeps it constantly interesting and surprising. Though New Zealanders try to generalize about China, I've learned that, in a country of 1.3 billion, there's an exception to every sweeping statement.