Shanghai to Beijing.

I’m writing again while in transit. This time from Shanghai back to Beijing, where I am give a talk on Friday afternoon at a GIS conference. The stewardesses on this plane (China Southern) just all lined up and bowed. And each of them got introduced and gave a little individual bow.

It’s funny how my library visits gave a structure to the previous few weeks. Without that little bit of business to attend to in Shanghai, my time seemed almost languid—there was no rushing to find food, local transport, and tickets to the next destination. Still, I found myself doing many of the same things, chief among them wandering around almost aimlessly soaking in the sights.

It’s all almost over. In exactly one week I’ll be back (physically) at work. School and work and research are so intertwined that I haven’t really considered myself to be away from work. Being ‘in the field’, so to speak, has made me feel like a real geographer. So did Shanghai. I now have a very visceral (and visual) sense of the term ‘post-colonial’ that no amount of reading could have given me. I am also starting to form the opinion that there is nothing ‘post’ about it. Having my final dinner on a rooftop restaurant on the Bund, with 3 wairesses all to myself, looking in one direction over blocks of 1920s bank buildings and in the other at a po-mo skyline of corporate logos, I felt very much the occupying power.

I’ll post the Shanghai story in bits and pieces. The post-visit long post seems to be popular, but I’ve got to work on my paper which will be given on Friday, and I’ve got people to see here in Beijing.