Differences between Seattle and Shanghai by Riley

Differences between Seattle and Shanghai

By Riley

6/29/2012

Our driver takes us to a fast food restaurant for lunch one day, we walk in and there is no English on the menu. Aiden is trying to figure out what they all mean and I’m using my mom’s phone to translate it.  Aiden is getting almost all of it right, but there are some really weird characters that he cannot figure out. So I use the translator and it comes up with something that’s not even food. So Aiden tries to go to the front and asks for a English menu “我们可以有一个美国的菜, they don’t have any in the restaurant. We turn around worried that our driver took off and will be back in an hour and we don’t know what to order. Just then this really nice lady, who is Chinese but lives in Canada, walks up to us and helps us find our food we want, then she is nice enough to even order for us. She was our savior for the day!   We walk over to an open table right in front of where our food comes out of.  So we are eating all happily, then a guy who has been sitting behind us the whole entire time started drinking his soup. He wasn’t just drinking his soup, he was slurping it, it was so loud and gross, my mom couldn’t stand the slurping and she couldn’t eat while he was making the slurping sounds.  It went on for about 2 minutes, then I turned around and looked at his soup bowl and then I turned back to my mom and said, “ Don’t worry he’s almost done”. 

 Then at another meal we had at the “Dome” (my whole family likes to call it that because it looks like a dome) but it’s really called Metro City. 

My mom and Aiden were talking to this really nice guy named Stu who owns a restaurant in the “ Dome”.  While they were talking I saw 3 people, 2 guys and one lady sitting at a table behind my mom and they all look like they didn’t know each other. One of the guys ate all of his food, but then once he is done with his food he waited at the table.  Then the lady walks away because she’s full, but the guy I have been watching wasn't. He swooped over once she left and started eating her food. He was sitting right next to a see through window that was right next to the escalator. The lady whose food the guy was eating walked by and looked at him and gave this really disgusted look at him.  Then once the other guy was done he did the same thing, started eating his food, but he didn’t go down the escalator so he didn’t see the guy eating his food.  Once he was done eating everyone else’s food he got up and started practicing kick boxing in the hall way. 

So now we move on to the people on the street, people don’t have the same customs that we do in the US. The thing that is most disgusting is they spit big, huge loogies out everywhere! It makes my mom and I look around and try not to step on them. We also look at each other and have this really disturbed look on our faces every time. 

Then there’s a lot of beggars that look so miserable I feel so bad for them, but I don’t have money on me whenever I see them so I can’t give money to them, but I really want to!!!! In the US you would rarely ever see people on the side of the road with no legs and missing one arm. It’s so sad that their in this position and I can’t do anything to help, it’s so sad.

This is a picture of a mother and son that have no where to live and sleep right there on the road.

Last time I was in Shanghai there was this father and son that looked like they were in a fire and burned badly and now they’re homeless and have no money. I wish there was something I could do.