Some stuff I forgot to mention....

So one last thing about toilet paper... [then I'm done] -

In addition to not being provided in public places or otherwise, people also do not throw the paper [once used] away in the toilet. They put it all in small trash cans inside the stalls.... very different, very hard to get used to. I'm waiting for the day I stop the sewer systems with too many converted trees.

People driving cars and "stops" or "stopping" -

EVERY time people stop at stop lights or in traffic when things come to a stand-still - people either put the parking brake on, or shift the car out of drive and into park. Strangest thing I've ever seen... EVERY light, EVERY stop. Not sure exactly why they do it, but nevertheless everywhere you go all you hear is click click click click click up.... light turns green or traffic starts to move, and click click click click down. Weirdest thing.... over and over and over again.

Blinking city streets -

If you think Vegas has a lot of lights, you haven't seen Shanghai on a week-day-night. I finally figured out where all the money goes in this country: to light it up at night, wow. Talk about an awesome display of colors and sequencing. Almost every large structure has tens-of-thousands of either neon or LED lighting attached to it. During the daytime everything looks like a typical sky-line in a super large city... come night, the light show begins at 7pm sharp and turns off at 10pm - but between those hours blinkity blinkity blink blink blink. Even the most modest of structures like government buildings and banks [the guys that like to "keep" all our money] light it up like a Fourth of July fireworks show in Wash. DC Impressive, it's hard to concentrate on what you are doing when there are so many lights blinking and turning different colors.

Buildings and structures -

To my great surprise [well, maybe not that much of a surprise], not "all" of China is some huge barren desert with trillions of little huts and lots of guy running around in rickshaws [miniature manpowered carts / buggies with two wheels and a bench in the back and some guy with poles in front]. Quite the contrary China's larger cities are nothing short of civil engineering marvels... one of the veterans of our parent company told us that Beijing COMPLETES the construction of an ENTIRE skyscraper at a rate of one a day. Can you imagine.... one per day, everyday. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what that really means. Something else about the architecture here too is that a vast majority of the buildings here are very well designed. Maybe not the absolute top of the line "materials" used to build it, but unbelievable shapes, sizes and shear complexity. Shanghai is what NYC will look like 20 or 30 years into the future... AND that's not where the infrastructure stops. There are entire networks of highways and buildings and schools and neighborhoods built 5 years in advance.... then when a place starts to become overpopulated or worn-down - the government opens up the new area and boom, overnight a new division of a city is created almost instantaneously. There are several structures in the U.S. that are noteworthy, Empire State Building, Sears Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, etc. - here every-other building is like one of those and they go up from there. [pictures to follow - again]

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