Duncan Leung - Tech, Photography, Cycling, and Life in Beijing

So I’m here in Shanghai visiting my girlfriend for ten days- I was really wanting to bag up my fixie and bring it with me here cos I know that there’s a large community of fixie riders here in Shanghai. Also, I realized that it really sucks walking around in Shanghai because it’s so hot and humid! I forgot what it’s like to live in a humid place- even after growing up in Singapore for 18 years, which is probably even more hot and humid than Shanghai; I’m absolutely dying of heat exhaustion here.

That said though, Shanghai definitely reinforces my thoughts that Beijing is ‘the Jungle’- life feels a lot more comfortable here: things are cleaner, it’s convenient to commute (the subway system is pretty darned awesome with receeding doors that make the train more aerodynamic- yes, I’m still an engineer at heart and I notice these things); all in all, Shanghai reminds me of Singapore and Hong Kong.

In any case, I was still able to bike around a bit. My girlfriend’s roommate left the key to her China-style commuter bike, though it was aching for a tune-up- I don’t even think the brakes were working, and I wasn’t about to ride around with someone on the back on a bike with faulty brakes. I found a small 修车 shop nearby and tried to explain that I wanted a tune-up; I find it a bit harder to communicate here in Shanghai- it’s not too bad, but the way that locals speak 普通话 here sounds a bit different from the way they speak in Beijing. The uncle explained that the bike needed a new rear-brake (it’s kind of a weird disk-brake) that would cost 25元, and I figured that it would be a small price to pay for safety, and also would be appreciated by my girlfriend’s roommate.

The job required the uncle to take the wheel off to switch out the old disk-brake, so he began to ask about where I was from, and where I grew up. It was really interesting, though, as he began to share about his life (at least, relatively interesting as I wasn’t able to understand 100% of what he was saying- but he made a conscious effort to stop every now and then and ask me: “听懂了吗?”). From what I understood, the uncle’s family was originally a farmer family from the 江苏 province, but during the cultural revolution they were forced to move into Shanghai, and were never able to move back. He also shared about the necessity of money in China- “你应该作医生”; if you’re a surgeon here in China you can make the most money because there’s the most underhand money in that profession. The only way to guarantee a successful surgery is to offer a good ‘tip’.

It’s a harsh reality that even under this facade of a developed city called Shanghai, that there are still the same social issues at hand that need to be addressed by this government.

-Duncan

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