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.