Shanghai

finance vs. fashion, finance vs. fashion... oh dear!

So I've been a bit lame about updating this blog. I'm putting it down to not being able to view it (hanks PRC) although at least I can get the BBC, contrary to my expectations!

I arrived a couple of days ago, on the 30th. Have so much to write about. settling in, red stamps, money counters, hot weather, maglevs etc.

Most exciting (!!) tho was today. The last couple of days have been mostly settling in and desperatly trying to relearn the year of chinese lessons that have drifted over exam term. Love the almost total immersion (have been helped out greatly by a grad student here, Tang, who is also using the chance to polish his english, admittedly much much MUCH better than my chinese at the moment!).

Today, we went to pay my tuition fees, and i lost my wallet on the bus! this has never happened to me before, could it happen at less convenient time?! Luckily, Eurotrip buff that I am, I had all my not insignificant stash of renminbi in a pouch around my neck under my shirt. however, it had my HSBC card AND my barclaycard inside (yes, it sounds silly in retrospect to me to), as well as a few other bits and bobs and $5 USD that i was going to use to buy a beer in moscow airport on the way home (damn barbarians don't even accept euros yet, let alone the queen's silver).

Well, there's nothing like deseratly needing money from a uk account that you dont have the debit card to any longer to catalyse a rapid study in international money transfer methods, and calling the uk from abroad. HSBC china weren't very helpful (at the risk of being condescending, i don't think they've got the conceptof free banking over here just yet. as soon as they heard that i didn't have the account plus - "VIP account" as they called it - they didn't really want to know). Luckily mother has just had a rather large tax rebate so was able not only to cancel the cards for me from the uk, but also send an emergency £300 across via western union until the replacement debit card arrives. They have my maximum regard - money arrived in about 5 minutes, which was longer than it took for the queue in China Agricultural Bank to clear, and they are also great incidentally, great transfer rate, wish I'd done my cash there the other day, would've got about RMB 150 more!

Anyway, since we were in town anyway, we went formy first tour. We saw lots of tall buildings in funny shapes, big rivers, and drab C19 british bomb shelters. Went to browse a few malls, can't wait to go back with a bit more ready cash, tho the prices certainly weren't bad and the shop assistants very friendly! they had suits for GBP 30ish, and some very nice polo shirts for about a tenner. Only thing that held me back from the suit was I heard you can get some very good tailored ones for not much more.

Of course the morning's excitment had left me with a critical decision to make. I could either risk becoming a victim of financial crime again or else do the unthinkable and commit the worst crime of fashion... (see above i think - does anyone know how to put them at the bottom?)