Shanghai el Primero Vez

My first time in Shanghai was a memorable experience, if somewhat mixed. I was met at the Shanghai South Station from Jiaxing by a friend of some family friends, Jenny, who had invited me to stay in her home. Really nice woman in her 40s, her and her husband, although she spoke better English. My foster family, so to speak, had a nice apartment on the 30th floor of a building right in in a busy part of town. Many many skyscrapers, this was for sure. Jiaxing is only 45 minutes from Shanghai by train, and only just over 3 USD for a one way ticket, so pretty easy overall.

I hit the Expo that first afternoon, but I'm going to do a separate post on that. Wow though. Pretty incredible. Don't think I've ever seen so many people in one area ever. I'll get more into that in another post though.

The rest of the trip was really good with the exception of some technical issues. That evening Jenny took me out to dinner with some of her friends, got to practice more Chinese, and she bought a really good Sichuan meal for me. She was very, very kind overall and look forward to seeing her again. She had a co-worker tag along with me that night who spoke really good English, and we hit up one of Shanghai's most famous nightclubs, No. 88 Bar. A single table there cost 800 RMB, over 100 USD. Not including any drinks.

Thought I was doing well, negotiated a time to DJ there the next night after talking to a few of the music directors. Next day was a nightmare though, my computer was giving me tons of problems. Wouldn't start Windows at all, kept having to restart it, and only four months old. Long story short, scrambled all day trying to fix it, downloading music, researching an alternative DJ method, and failing. I completely bombed after a minute onstage that night, since I didn't know how to use the foreign software (Serato), and was pretty bummed. The rest of my experience was good though. Had really good Thai food and pizza, all courtesy of Jenny. The DJ thing was pretty upsetting but I tried to put it behind me. Back to Jiaxing the next day was a bummer too, Shanghai was a million times more fun.