wo de zhong wen jiang de bu hao

At the moment I'm in the beautiful city of Paris and it's incredible. The view during the bus ride from Charles de Gaulle to Pigalle where I'm staying with a friend took my breath away. It's my second time here, but last time was for 3 days jam-packed full of tourist-y things and this time I'm here for about a month which really gives me the chance to fall in love with the place; even though that's already happened.

However, I'm firstly going to finish with Shanghai.

See what I mean by grey? It makes everything quite dull and it's a shame because it makes life here seem extra nitty gritty. Don't get me wrong though, Shanghai is an amazing place, crazy, but amazing. Development only really started in the late 20th century so the entire city has been one massive construction site for the past 40 years or so. Buildings are shooting upwards, each containing thousands of people, hundreds of families. There were 1500 families living in the complex where I was staying; about 10 high-rise apartment buildings surrounding a man-made lake.

1. View from my bedroom
2. View from an 8+ storey carpark in central Shanghai

I don't have a photo of the area but my dad told me a story about how one time at 'People's Place' some old senile man dropped his pants and took a shit in the middle of the concrete quad.

How to drive in Shanghai

• Traffic lights are merely guidelines
• Same with lanes
• Number plates? Unnecessary (see above)
• Never indicate
• Never give way
• If you're on a scooter/bike just go wherever you want, in any direction, whenever you feel like it
• Don't wear your seatbelt
• Honk at everyone and everything for no particular reason
• If you can't be bothered paying for parking, just leave your vehicle in the middle of the road

I don't remember what these things were called. But they were oily and delicious as fuck.

1. (right) Some little bun things that had already been eaten by the time I'd remembered to take a photo, (left) Tofu and blood (in my spoon) soup
2. Steamed then fried pork bun things with soup stuff inside.

God I'm great at explaining things.

Introducing my new baby half-sister; Guo guo

Some jelly in Carrefour

This last one is for Hannah: