And so we say farewell again.

That's right. I'm off home again. It's been 6 weeks. Hasn't time flown? Good job too because instead of muttering "get out of my fucking way" to Chinese people who block the pavement, I have begun to say it out loud, relying on their inability to speak English to save me from a punch on the conk or a bunch of fives or a kick up the breadbasket.

This is where you can get your boobies tattooed

This complete indifference to other people takes the form of this type of encounter. I will be walking down Shanxi Lu to work in the morning. There's a sort of cafe on the way and people gather there to get breakfast. This takes the form of crowding round, barging people out of the way and trying to get served first. Anyway this crowd spills out onto the street, narrowing an already narrow pavement further. A roadside tree narrows it yet further an there's a railing so you can't skip out onto the road to avoid the bottleneck. So what your looking at is a gap slightly narrower then a person through which every pedestrian on that side of the busy street must pass.

What happens is this. A person walking steadily along in front of me, without stopping, moving smoothly (admittedly at the annoying speed Shanghai people walk - called the Shanghai Shuffle - it's too slow to stay behind and too fast to overtake easily) will automatically choose that very spot to stop and....... and..... do nothing! They don't want food, they don't want to tie their shoelace, they don't want to fish their mobile out of their pocket, nothing. They just want to look at air or something. People here seem to have a 6th sense about what would be the stupidest, most inconvenient, selfish thing they could possibly do and then do it. Pavement wankers.

One of China's picturesque homes

It's uncanny. People walking towards you will veer across the pavement to obstruct you. Once you know this of course, you can use it to your advantage. Whenever you walk around the key thing is to imagine what surrounding people could do to inconvenience you the most. Drive their bike at you, park their car on the pavement, drive their taxi at you at full speed then slow right down to a crawl so that you can't cross the road, veer across the pavement, just walk straight at you, stop suddenly, yell alarmingly.. any number of things. Whatever it is will inevitably happen but because you have thought ahead, you have already mapped out a route to get round the obstruction. When you outsmart them, they find it REALLY annoying. Ha!

A crane down by Nanpu Bridge on the Haungpu River. Honestly it's pu this, pu that. And, you've guessed it, pu the other.

 For example I must use the lift to get to the ground floor of my apartment block. When the lift reaches the ground floor any Chinese peoples waiting for the lift there will just charge on regardless if there is anyone trying to get off. It has been necessary on occasions to stand aside to let them in before you can get out. Not anymore. As the lift nears the ground floor I stand directly in front of the doors with my nose 1cm from the lift doors. So when they open I am right there in front of them blocking the door. It gives them quite a fright and makes them really cross that they haven't been able to get in anyone's way.

Anyway. As many a traveller has told me, it's important to embrace the customs and traditions of the peoples one is visiting. So I've given up being polite. When in Shanghai, behave as the Shanghaiese do. Barge through, never stand aside, never give an inch.

Yes yes. It sounds like London. But it isn't. It's worse here.

Recently there was a hoo hah about a young girl who was knocked down and then ignored by passers by. It surprises me not one jot. Life is cheap here and no one gives a fuck about anyone else. It is just a race to get rich and embrace all the worst excesses of Western culture.

That was cathartic. I was drinking a beer called Dead Guy Ale last night which may go some way to explaining the vitriol.

The more things change...the more they stay the same.

In The Kangaroo, you are allowed to chalk slogans, bon mots and witty aphorisms on the walls and ceilings. In the old days (last April) when I was here last and before the great Kangaroo Fuck Up (KFU) when they renovated it up, the walls were permanently adorned with all sorts of rubbish and in my mind, all the better for it but, as everyone knows, whatever I think is automatically wrong.
Anyway I was having a lonely pint in there on Friday (actually not so lonely because the barmaids have started talking to me now) and I happened to glance at the ceiling. When you're by yourself in a bar you often find yourself looking in places you don't normally look. Anything to entertain yourself. Anyway I was rewarded for my curiosity with this excellent piece of erudition.

Dutch/ Belgian graffiti on the ceiling of The Kangaroo. The circular object is a ceiling light.

It's not so much the font he's used, the kerning or indeed the sentiment behind his observation that is so interesting. It's the fact that given an empty space and a writing instrument, a bloke will always default to drawing a jizzing cock (a little known fact is that the earliest cave paintings were of jizzing cocks - archeologists hide this fact because they don't want to let on that our earliest ancestors were basically giggling neanderthal knobheads  - Homo Knobheadiens is the missing link. It's not missing at all it's just largely hidden in shame).
However I don't think this is drawn by a British person.  Why? Read on.

Number 1: The name Chris Van V sounds distinctly Dutch/Belgian and those guys don't like to mix.
Number 2: The "jizz" is a sort of.....well I don't know how to describe it.... all wrong. Anyway a plucky British bloke would have drawn a dotted line, curving at the end to show the effects of gravity.
Number 3: The balls are too well drawn The artist has given them perspective. That's a no no. Just two big Mickey Mouse ears drawn with one sweeping line is the British way.
Number 4: No crinkly hair emanating from the balls. Whilst not mandatory, if not under time pressure, a British bloke will usually add 2 to 4 crinkly "hairs" as a kind of artistic flourish. Such as Picasso might do.

Shanghai taxi service

Someone at my apartment block booked a cab from the guys down at BJ taxis. Having seen the driver I don't think I'll be booking them for my trip to the airport. If you know what I mean (and I think that you do)

This is where I get my massages from No.9.

It was China's National Day last Saturday where everyone is so delighted to be living in a repressive regime that they take the week off and go on holiday. This has left me at a bit of a loose end. While most of the population leave the city, leaving only 2% of the population here (8,000,030,000,070 there or thereabouts) I'm here all by myself and a few other white people.
So far I have been doing these things: Running down by the mighty Huangpu River, waking up late, eating pizza, attracted the attentions of a homosexual man (still got it), drinking dark beer (new discovery - it is more expensive than normal Chinese beer so it has the distinct advantage of actually tasting nice), sitting in the office all by myself, sitting in the office with two other people, sitting in a cafe with all the other tables occupied by other solitary white people. And been for two massages.

I went to the place above and asked for a Chinese massage. It's about £7. This is definitely NOT a relaxing massage. A tiny little Chinese girl came into the room and gave me my massage outfit. A big pair of baggy shorts and baggy top. She insisted I put on a pair of slippers so I did. Then roughly 2 seconds later she gestured to the bench for me to lie down which I did. She then emitted a squeak and took the slippers off again. Eh?
Anyhow. Then she got going.

The massage ratios went something like this:

50% Excrutiating agony.
26% Pain.
3% What in the UK would be termed Grevious Bodily Harm.
17% Quite nice.
2% arousing (listen there's a twenty year old, Chinese version of Angelina Jolie wobbling your bum cheeks around. I defy Pope John Paul John Ringo to stay unmoved).
9% wobbling.
2% faintly ridiculous (she grabbed my hand and made my arm make like a skipping rope).

The most painful bits were
1. When she grabbed the two bits of biological string (tendons I think is the  medical term) that go from the lower 'sides' (another medical term) of your neck and attach onto your shoulders. I think they're for stopping your head from toppling off. Anyway she grabbed both of these and started pulling them AWAY from my rest of my body. I'm not ashamed to say, my one reader, that I yelped. You know, like dogs do when you step on their paws. She laughed.
2. She counted down the vertebrae in my back, one by one, until she identified one she plainly took a dislike to, popped one thumb onto it, then balanced her entire body weight on it. Jesus. I don't know what it had done to her but she really took offence.

I think I can truthfully say that it was a "happy ending" in that I was bloody happy when she made little squeaking noises that indicated I was free to go. She pointed to her badge and said "No.9!" I really wanted her to add "me love you long time." Not 'cos it's rude. Because it would have flowed so seamlessly.

I wasn't going to fall for that one again so the next time I went I had an "Oil massage." And...OK... I admit it....I also asked for No.9. It felt sleazy. A number.

In this massage you wear a pair of disposable blue shorts and that's it. No.9 squeaked a lot again but there was no slipper fiasco. I had taken the precaution of hiding them when she left the room for me to don the blue pant. I lay down on the bench. This massage wasn't anywhere near as painful but there were occasions, mostly when I fell asleep, relaxed as a badger, that she would remind me of her presence by rubbing me really vigorously and getting a good bit of heat going and making my head bounce up and down. She had another go at the vertebrae she doesn't like, though her heart wasn't in it this time.

There was plenty of wobbling and arse cheek....what's the word... ahh yes...kneading. Le mot juste. And surprisingly but not unpleasantly, stomach patting. I know. Sounds weird. Is weird. But really very nice. She does take the precaution of draping a towel over your manservant...ahhh....area and jolly good job too.

I shall be going back to No.9 (or Niney as I have nicknamed her)  for one more massage before getting smashed watching the rugby on Saturday. What a treat for her.