Practical matters in Shanghai
For the purposes of my discussing costs I have experienced in Shanghai, 1 USD is about 6.5 RMB right now.
Getting around I use the Shanghai metro. I will never get used to calling it the metro. Here, a subway is a tunnel that goes under big streets so you can not wait for the light. Down there you will often find some kind of miniature shopping mall, in case you remembered you wanted to buy a new wardrobe or collection of moisturizers while you're on your way to wherever the hell you were going. I remember in Taiwan and cities in China that aren't Shanghai, there'd also be women down there pulling hairs out of other womens' faces with two strings. But anyway, the metro has 10 lines here I think so far. I have probably ridden on about half of them, maybe more at this point. I was buying single-ride tickets for 3-5 RMB originally, though after a few days I bought a metro card which here is a contactless RFID card like most cities in Asia. This means guys just put their wallets on the thing and women just put their whole purse on it instead of hunting for it to swipe it like in NYC. Also, they don't run into the swipe-too-fast or swipe-too-slow problems we have. I wonder if NYC will switch to something like this eventually. They have been experimenting with "Blink" and things like that where you charge your credit card directly for years but that doesn't seem to be catching on. Also, when your metro card here runs low, you recharge it, and you just continue recharging it indefinitely. I suppose this is similar to NYC's metro cards though ours experience wear and tear and eventually stop working which is why I often end up getting new monthly cards and discarding the old ones. But I digest. This is an obscure Family Guy reference, not a mistake. So the metro card is a 20 RMB deposit which apparently you can get back, then you charge it up with whatever you want. The maximum cost of any individual ride in Shanghai seems to be 5 or 6 RMB. Prices vary depending on how far you're going. I don't think you can use the card yet in stores the way you can use it in HK at 7-11 and McDonalds and so on. Still pretty good system though, and pretty cheap.
On the downside, the last train is pretty much at 10:30pm. Definitely before 11pm. This is a disaster of course. Since I don't know the bus system really, I end up taking cabs instead. The distances are pretty much too far to walk depending on where you live I suppose. So far the longest cab ride I have taken was 25 RMB which I estimate in NYC would've costed about 20 USD for a comparable distance. Most cab rides tend to be about 15 RMB during the day and less than 20 RMB at night. So cabs are pretty cheap compared to New York.
Foodwise, I probably most often buy water which is 1-2 RMB a bottle depending on the brand. They have more expensive brands like Evian if you want too which vary depending on where you buy them, but I think are still often less than $1 USD if you buy them in a convenience store. A bottle of tea or soda is something like 3-4 RMB. Those 24 hours convenience stores are everywhere pretty much. This is true in most cities I've visited in China, not just Shanghai. As far as meals go, I have been eating most often at small, informal places in my neighborhood which is called Changning. Most vegetarian dishes are less than 20 RMB. Maybe meat dishes are similar, maybe 20something but I'm not sure cause I don't look that much. Last night I got a tofu dish, a vegetable dish, white rice, and a sprite for 35 RMB. This is probably the most expensive meal I have eaten in this neighborhood. There is a fried noodle place up the ride where I can get a huge container of tofu, vegetables, and fried noodles for about 10 RMB. Depending on how much Chinese you speak, the price fluctuates. A friend from the hostel paid 20 RMB for a chicken dish. Another time we went together and it was 15 RMB. My friend the hostel security guard believes we are still being ripped off. He said my tofu noodles should be 7 or 8 RMB at most. I explained to him that we'll never get those prices as foreigners and honestly I'm not going to haggle with these guys over 30 cents. He didn't really get that and thinks it is all about the bottom line. Maybe he's right. My other favorite meal in the neighborhood is tofu or veggies on sticks, which costs 1 RMB per stick. I usually get 3-6 depending on how hungry I am. My local breakfast is congee with two vegetable buns for 3.8 RMB. There's also this guy that sells stuffed breads which I mentioned in a previous post and I usually spend 2-5 RMB there for a bag of stuff. Moving onward, things get more expensive in restaurants. Actual westerner-friendly restaurants I mean. Then things end up being more like 80-100 RMB per person. Tonight I had a meal with 12 people which costed 40 RMB per person. I have walked past restaurants that charge upwards of 200 RMB per person, and like NYC if you really want to, you can spend as much as you want in the really fancy restaurants that I won't be visiting. I'm sure there are many 1000+ RMB per person meals to be had here without lots of effort, the local equivalents of Daniel or Jean Georges or whatever fancy restaurant you know the name of in NYC. Obviously I don't know that many.
Bars are another story. At the hostel, a beer costs about 10 RMB. In the convenience stores, it costs about 5 RMB. At one bar I visited, the cheapest beer was a Tsingtao for 25 RMB. At the next, it was 45 RMB. And then at one more still, the cheapest was 60 RMB. That's like $9 USD for a beer. They go higher of course. This is where we start to see the crazy Shanghai rich people prices showing up I suppose. I saw a couple order a bottle of champagne for 1000 RMB. My friend from Anhui told me there is a pack of cigarettes that costs 2000 RMB a pack. That's not a typo. That's $300 USD for a pack of cigarettes. He said it's for high rollers (and presumably corrupt government officials) and like many things here, it's about status. It's why people drive ridiculously expensive cars and wear expensive suits and jewelry. A girl I met from Sweden says that she has seen people order two bottles of champagne, one to drink and one to spill down the sink just to show that they can afford to throw money away. This sounds hard to believe, but I liked the story so I'm including it. That girl is staying at the hostel here and returning from a trip to Beijing she developed a high fever and a stomach problem. Made me nervous a little cause I don't want to get sick, but the doctor said it was likely food poisoning. So that was good news.
I don't know a lot about apartment costs here. One girl I met lives in a one-bedroom with a living room in Pudong which costs 1900 RMB. She said the same apartment in Puxi would cost over 3000 RMB. I'm not too familiar with Pudong really. The business center of Shanghai is there, but I think a lot of is residential. She is quite far away from the financial area. Puxi has residential neighborhoods but is the center of nightlife, restaurants and that sort of thing. There is a lot of colonial influence in the neighborhoods which make for very pretty tree-lined streets with interesting architecture. I know somebody else who lives in a 4-bedroom place in Puxi for 25,000 RMB. I gather that place is larger and nicer in some relatively new apartment building, but I'm only going off of a description, I didn't see any of these places with my own eyes. Clearly prices run the gamut but it seems as if it's more than possible to get a decent place to yourself here within an arms throw of the cool areas via subway for less than it would cost for something comparable anywhere in New York. Maybe that seems obvious, but although I was sure the average costs of living in Shanghai or Hong Kong would be cheaper than in NYC, I wasn't too sure about apartments. For buying apartments I'm really not sure. There are probably a bunch of incredibly boring and speculative blogs you could find about that specifically. I'll leave that to them for the moment.
Only two more nights in Shanghai. Monday I'm going to Hangzhou to which I'm looking forward. It's supposed to be a quiet and attractive city the main feature of which is this beautiful lake everybody raves about. I think mainly it is supposed to be a relaxing alternative to its busy neighbor. I may go tomorrow to buy the ticket as I hear they can sell out quickly, but there are apparently quite a few express trains per day and it's only 45 minutes so I can't imagine it is that big of a deal. Basically all my travel details are handled now including hostel/hotel bookings all the way through to Israel. Hard to believe the China part of the trip is almost over. I think my Chinese has probably improved despite the large number of English conversations I've had here. There are just too many foreigners in Shanghai to avoid speaking English entirely. I still managed to have a lot of Chinese conversations anyway and hopefully in Hangzhou and maybe in Singapore I can have some more. I also started using an input method on my phone which allows me to very easily look up Chinese characters I don't know. This has been tremendously useful and I'm quite pleased about it. It enables me to learn from signs, newspapers and books in a way that I couldn't really effectively learn new words before. I think it will help a great deal from now on.
Now I am going to drink a beer. It's saturday night and it's raining.
Getting around I use the Shanghai metro. I will never get used to calling it the metro. Here, a subway is a tunnel that goes under big streets so you can not wait for the light. Down there you will often find some kind of miniature shopping mall, in case you remembered you wanted to buy a new wardrobe or collection of moisturizers while you're on your way to wherever the hell you were going. I remember in Taiwan and cities in China that aren't Shanghai, there'd also be women down there pulling hairs out of other womens' faces with two strings. But anyway, the metro has 10 lines here I think so far. I have probably ridden on about half of them, maybe more at this point. I was buying single-ride tickets for 3-5 RMB originally, though after a few days I bought a metro card which here is a contactless RFID card like most cities in Asia. This means guys just put their wallets on the thing and women just put their whole purse on it instead of hunting for it to swipe it like in NYC. Also, they don't run into the swipe-too-fast or swipe-too-slow problems we have. I wonder if NYC will switch to something like this eventually. They have been experimenting with "Blink" and things like that where you charge your credit card directly for years but that doesn't seem to be catching on. Also, when your metro card here runs low, you recharge it, and you just continue recharging it indefinitely. I suppose this is similar to NYC's metro cards though ours experience wear and tear and eventually stop working which is why I often end up getting new monthly cards and discarding the old ones. But I digest. This is an obscure Family Guy reference, not a mistake. So the metro card is a 20 RMB deposit which apparently you can get back, then you charge it up with whatever you want. The maximum cost of any individual ride in Shanghai seems to be 5 or 6 RMB. Prices vary depending on how far you're going. I don't think you can use the card yet in stores the way you can use it in HK at 7-11 and McDonalds and so on. Still pretty good system though, and pretty cheap.
On the downside, the last train is pretty much at 10:30pm. Definitely before 11pm. This is a disaster of course. Since I don't know the bus system really, I end up taking cabs instead. The distances are pretty much too far to walk depending on where you live I suppose. So far the longest cab ride I have taken was 25 RMB which I estimate in NYC would've costed about 20 USD for a comparable distance. Most cab rides tend to be about 15 RMB during the day and less than 20 RMB at night. So cabs are pretty cheap compared to New York.
Foodwise, I probably most often buy water which is 1-2 RMB a bottle depending on the brand. They have more expensive brands like Evian if you want too which vary depending on where you buy them, but I think are still often less than $1 USD if you buy them in a convenience store. A bottle of tea or soda is something like 3-4 RMB. Those 24 hours convenience stores are everywhere pretty much. This is true in most cities I've visited in China, not just Shanghai. As far as meals go, I have been eating most often at small, informal places in my neighborhood which is called Changning. Most vegetarian dishes are less than 20 RMB. Maybe meat dishes are similar, maybe 20something but I'm not sure cause I don't look that much. Last night I got a tofu dish, a vegetable dish, white rice, and a sprite for 35 RMB. This is probably the most expensive meal I have eaten in this neighborhood. There is a fried noodle place up the ride where I can get a huge container of tofu, vegetables, and fried noodles for about 10 RMB. Depending on how much Chinese you speak, the price fluctuates. A friend from the hostel paid 20 RMB for a chicken dish. Another time we went together and it was 15 RMB. My friend the hostel security guard believes we are still being ripped off. He said my tofu noodles should be 7 or 8 RMB at most. I explained to him that we'll never get those prices as foreigners and honestly I'm not going to haggle with these guys over 30 cents. He didn't really get that and thinks it is all about the bottom line. Maybe he's right. My other favorite meal in the neighborhood is tofu or veggies on sticks, which costs 1 RMB per stick. I usually get 3-6 depending on how hungry I am. My local breakfast is congee with two vegetable buns for 3.8 RMB. There's also this guy that sells stuffed breads which I mentioned in a previous post and I usually spend 2-5 RMB there for a bag of stuff. Moving onward, things get more expensive in restaurants. Actual westerner-friendly restaurants I mean. Then things end up being more like 80-100 RMB per person. Tonight I had a meal with 12 people which costed 40 RMB per person. I have walked past restaurants that charge upwards of 200 RMB per person, and like NYC if you really want to, you can spend as much as you want in the really fancy restaurants that I won't be visiting. I'm sure there are many 1000+ RMB per person meals to be had here without lots of effort, the local equivalents of Daniel or Jean Georges or whatever fancy restaurant you know the name of in NYC. Obviously I don't know that many.
Bars are another story. At the hostel, a beer costs about 10 RMB. In the convenience stores, it costs about 5 RMB. At one bar I visited, the cheapest beer was a Tsingtao for 25 RMB. At the next, it was 45 RMB. And then at one more still, the cheapest was 60 RMB. That's like $9 USD for a beer. They go higher of course. This is where we start to see the crazy Shanghai rich people prices showing up I suppose. I saw a couple order a bottle of champagne for 1000 RMB. My friend from Anhui told me there is a pack of cigarettes that costs 2000 RMB a pack. That's not a typo. That's $300 USD for a pack of cigarettes. He said it's for high rollers (and presumably corrupt government officials) and like many things here, it's about status. It's why people drive ridiculously expensive cars and wear expensive suits and jewelry. A girl I met from Sweden says that she has seen people order two bottles of champagne, one to drink and one to spill down the sink just to show that they can afford to throw money away. This sounds hard to believe, but I liked the story so I'm including it. That girl is staying at the hostel here and returning from a trip to Beijing she developed a high fever and a stomach problem. Made me nervous a little cause I don't want to get sick, but the doctor said it was likely food poisoning. So that was good news.
I don't know a lot about apartment costs here. One girl I met lives in a one-bedroom with a living room in Pudong which costs 1900 RMB. She said the same apartment in Puxi would cost over 3000 RMB. I'm not too familiar with Pudong really. The business center of Shanghai is there, but I think a lot of is residential. She is quite far away from the financial area. Puxi has residential neighborhoods but is the center of nightlife, restaurants and that sort of thing. There is a lot of colonial influence in the neighborhoods which make for very pretty tree-lined streets with interesting architecture. I know somebody else who lives in a 4-bedroom place in Puxi for 25,000 RMB. I gather that place is larger and nicer in some relatively new apartment building, but I'm only going off of a description, I didn't see any of these places with my own eyes. Clearly prices run the gamut but it seems as if it's more than possible to get a decent place to yourself here within an arms throw of the cool areas via subway for less than it would cost for something comparable anywhere in New York. Maybe that seems obvious, but although I was sure the average costs of living in Shanghai or Hong Kong would be cheaper than in NYC, I wasn't too sure about apartments. For buying apartments I'm really not sure. There are probably a bunch of incredibly boring and speculative blogs you could find about that specifically. I'll leave that to them for the moment.
Only two more nights in Shanghai. Monday I'm going to Hangzhou to which I'm looking forward. It's supposed to be a quiet and attractive city the main feature of which is this beautiful lake everybody raves about. I think mainly it is supposed to be a relaxing alternative to its busy neighbor. I may go tomorrow to buy the ticket as I hear they can sell out quickly, but there are apparently quite a few express trains per day and it's only 45 minutes so I can't imagine it is that big of a deal. Basically all my travel details are handled now including hostel/hotel bookings all the way through to Israel. Hard to believe the China part of the trip is almost over. I think my Chinese has probably improved despite the large number of English conversations I've had here. There are just too many foreigners in Shanghai to avoid speaking English entirely. I still managed to have a lot of Chinese conversations anyway and hopefully in Hangzhou and maybe in Singapore I can have some more. I also started using an input method on my phone which allows me to very easily look up Chinese characters I don't know. This has been tremendously useful and I'm quite pleased about it. It enables me to learn from signs, newspapers and books in a way that I couldn't really effectively learn new words before. I think it will help a great deal from now on.
Now I am going to drink a beer. It's saturday night and it's raining.
posted by Dan at 6:51 AM
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