Sunday, December 23, 2018

Old Apartment

Earlier this month, I was in Shanghai to visit IKEA. When I looked out of my window to try to get my bearings, I noticed something familiar - my old apartment from 1999/2000.

It was not a nice building, but the room had been recently refinished. It had a small living room/ kitchen and the bedroom was the size of a closet. The bed was rock hard. My one window looked on to the back side of the Portman Ritz-Carlton, which could be considered the Mecca of Shanghai's western (at least American) high society in those days - this was before Pudong had become Shanghai's center of gravity.

I try to feel nostalgia for those days, but compared to Thailand, there was no romance in being poor.  Shanghai is a city that is very efficient at measuring your value and the value of your experience by the amount of money in your ATM.


 
 

No comments: