Contrast in China

Hi everybody,
It’s been a while, I was writing an e-mail to an old teacher of mine to give an update on how I’m doing and where I am and figured I might as well just upload it to my blog :P

At this moment I “ live” in China to improve my Chinese language. I will stay here until February and will go back to Netherlands for a week during Christmas^^

Live here is very different from the Netherlands, the metropolitan of Shanghai has more than 35 million registered inhabitants (probably a lot more unregistered) but is only the size of the provinces Friesland and Groningen combined.
You can imagine that creates quite a bit of chaos and rudeness between people. A lot of people from smaller places come to Shanghai to get a well-paid job, and not everybody is used to city live, you can still see some kids being held above the dustbin or next to a tree to do their needs. Next to that people here in general don’t’ care much for hygiene so toilets are very easy to find by following the smell.
Next to all this the air pollution isn’t good at all, it’s normally around 100 AQI and at the moment, (winter) it’s often over 200. So whenever I go outside I always wear a mask to be a bit safer.
To give a short explanation, 4 hours of walking and breathing in 100 AQI air equals a pack of cigarettes smoked at once. You can imagine higher AQI isn’t very beneficial for your body.

In contrast to this underdeveloped etiquette and dirtiness there is a whole other side of Shanghai and the cities close to it. There are brilliant large parks and nature areas and there is a lot of history.
Next to that, as you might have heard, on-line shopping is on a whole different level from the Netherlands. During singles day there was about 12 billion (miljard) Euro of revenue on Alibaba's consumer shopping website in one day.
Next to that there are several apps to order food at home from most of the restaurants in our area(kind of like thuisbezorgd.nl but then on your phone)
There is an app here called Wechat, which allows you to write messages and call with your friends through the internet like Whatsapp messenger, but this app also allows you to make and share movies, transfer different files and send money from your account to your friends or to a company.
For example, if you take a taxi, you can pay by Wechat or when you order food on-line, you can also pay with Wechat. It’s super convenient and way ahead of the Netherlands.
It’s very strange to me how this contrasts against the pooping kids and intoxicating air.

On the good side, because of the general rudeness of people friends and nice people stand out more and make good service or hospitality from friends that much better and more appreciated :)
That’s it for now.
If you would like me to bring anything from China during xmas, please let me know.
And feel free to ask questions or tell me about NL or wherever you are :)

Cheers,
Tommy