Shanghai
The first morsel of food left me unsettled. I panicked
wondering how I would eat. What was I eating? I could feel the oils in each
bite clinging to my esophagus sliding its way down making me slowly gag.
My first day, I walked through Shanghai, my face masked by
my umbrella. I hunched over hiding my height; my foreign features attracting
too much unwanted attention.
The staring never stopped. Blank faces on me, scanning up
and down, looking fixedly at my face. Chinese words being yelled, at who, in
every direction. I’ve never seen so many people in one place. Constant shoving.
People everywhere and I stand out immediately.
I wave a cab down. Sitting in the
backseat, I lean forward to show him my address card. My mangled Chinese can’t
even say the place that is supposed to be closest to me, my home.
At home, I lie in my bed in a daze
of confusion. I have no distractions in China. The TV is filled with game shows
or period dramas all in Chinese making no sense to me. The Internet moving like
molasses with my favorite websites, tumblr, Facebook, even Gmail, all blocked
by the China sensors. I panic wondering
how I’ll survive the upcoming months.
I enter back into center of city
once again at night. The dark sky hides people’s stares and it’s easier to
blend in. Pink, orange, and blue
neon lights flash.
The old city filled thousands of years of culture, custom, and tradition disappears. A different side of Shanghai emerges.
I chose the background of my blog to be a picture I took at the Great Wall of China. I felt like this was an appropriate first look at my blog because it was my first impression of China. This was the only thing I had really known before going.
ReplyDeleteThen I began my blog with a picture of Pudong from the Bund in Shanghai. This is the typical Shanghai skyline and the most recognizable shot of the city. I wanted my descriptions to be short but descriptive. I love vivid imagery. I also included a video in my post. I felt this gave a good view of my first day, the rain and the people. Finally, I included the neon lights. I think it still shows the masses of people while also the illumination of the lights.
The pictures of the city and the buildings contrasts really well with the blog’s wallpaper picture f the mountains and the Great Wall of China. It’s a good comparison between the crowded city and the sparse country. The author writes about the crowded city and does a very good job at making the reader feel the anxiety that comes with being in a crowded place, especially when it is a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and are clearly out of place. Because it is in first person point of view, you can really get inside the narrator’s head and feel what they are feeling. The feeling of anxiety would not work as well if it was in third person. You would not be able to walk in this person’s shoes and see the city through their eyes, so the first person narrative is very affective. The use of Mandarin in the post and in the title add to the aspect of being in a foreign place with a different language. It feels appropriate, but also a little out of place, just like the author does in the narrative. The setting of the narrative is Shanghai, and the two pictures, one of the city as a whole, the other of a street view, do a good job at helping set the scene told through the words. Even though the text does a good job at describing the city, the pictures help reinforce that. I wish the video was a little longer and clearer, because it’s shortness is a bit jarring, and the choppiness of it kind of breaks up the narrative. Overall, I think the structure and the text of the blog are very well thought-out. You really get a sense of what it is like being a new person in Shanghai, and the text and pictures compliment each other very well.
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