Most of us have changed our air-conditioners to cool from hot air and I have sent all my winter clothes to the dry cleaners. My wardrobe is now full of the thinnest clothes and I have a new pair of sandals ready for the enslaught which is the Shanghai summer. Yesterday I decided to take a walk down to Fuxing Park.
What a fantastic place it is with lots of activity going on, dancing kite flying, badminton, people having picnics, hanging out with their friends, playing chess and cards and generally relaxing in the sun. My ears were drawn towards the sound of a saxophonist and I walked over to see him, sat by him and listened for a while. I made a request for ‘Danny Boy’ (by humming it to him) and he happily obliged.
What better place is there to be than Shanghai when spring is here and it is not yet hot enough to make us want to run and hide from the sun. The promise of warm evenings sitting with my friends with a beer and pizza on Yong Kang Lu, the purchase of a new umbrella for those tropical rainstorms every afternoon and all my neighbours sitting outside my house eating and drinking and laughing with each other.
In the winter I barely see my neighbours but in the summer, they welcome me home as I have to walk past them to get to my door. Yesterday one neighbour said I must be the poorest foreigner living in the city if I could only afford to live in an old Chinese community. Why couldn’t I afford a modern flat like the others. I pointed out to him that in modern flats you don’t get a sense of community that these old places offer and for that, I would pay extra.