(Translation: Indian and Chinese are brothers) It was an interesting sight and since I didn't want to offend anyone by taking a photograph, here I am trying to draw a picture by words! This sight came up unexpectedly when we wandered into Friendship Shopping Center in Shanghai near LianHua Rd metro station. This is a …
Tag: Random observations
Random Observations: Traffic is no worse than India!
When we were coming here, we were told that traffic is really bad and I should not even think of owning a car, let alone driving it. So I have stuck to that advice and use public transport. However, traffic is not that bad, especially if you compare it with India. People here seem to …
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Random Observations: Why do Chinese websites names have numbers in them?
Within China, I find so many websites which are either entirely composed of numbers (like http://www.4008123123.com/ which is a pizza hut franchise in Shanghai), or part of the name is numbers. It was intriguing to me initially, and I was thinking about the reason. One reason is logical (esp the pizza hut example above): this …
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Random Observations: Buying Books
There are very large bookstores in Shanghai, much larger than the ones I saw in US. However, they carry Chinese books only (except for a small corner of foreign books). This is tough for me, because I really love the sight of books and like to spend time in a book store just browsing the …
Random Observations: Learning Chinese is harder for a native English speaker!
Learning Chinese via English is hard even though there is pinyin, even though pinyin was invented to make this easier. It is much easier to learn Chinese if you know an Indian language (or any other phonetic language). This is because English is not phonetic, and Chinese is all about tones and sounds. So a …
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Random Observations: People are so good
Our experience with people has been great so far, and I am told that it is normal. I see taxi drivers tolerating our lack of spoken Chinese and take it in their stride by trying extra hard to get us to our destinations, all without expecting anything outside the meter reading; I see shopkeepers trying …
Random Observations: Marriages in China
Coming from the thought process that Indian and Chinese culture are similar in lots of ways, I was very surprised to find that in most parts of china, it is expected that boys and girls will find their life partners on their own, rather than parents helping them (the so-called 'arranged marriage' which is so …
Some Random Observations about Shanghai and China
It has been a long time since I posted here, sorry about that. I have been busy in the process of settling down which has afforded me some observations which I will share over coming days. These are some of the observations I have had since we have been in Shanghai but I was trying …
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Buying medicines
Buying medicines was tougher than I thought. We asked in various govt hospitals but couldn't figure out what they were saying! Later we were told that they give medicine only on the prescriptions from their own doctors. When I went to couple of pharmacy, they wouldn't understand English prescriptions. I tried looking up Chinese names …
Being in Shanghai over week-long holiday (National Day)
Shanghai has 2 week-long holidays, one during Chinese New Year (end of Jan) and one during National Day (Oct 1). It is always fun, and somewhat unusual, to get a full week of holiday. It was amazing to see so many people on the road and in the shops in the initial couple days of …
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Diary of an opinionated Indian 