What A View!

It was a few days after Lunar New Year and Charles and I were on the 88th floor observation deck of what at that time was Shanghai’s tallest building–the Jin Mao tower. It was warm and sunny on the observation deck, and our sleeves were rolled up – a novelty after three months of freezing in Changchun.

Apart from offering amazing views of the Yalu river and some of Shanghai’s concessions, the Skywalk observation deck has a number of its own kitschy attractions: the highest post office in the world, a vertigo-inducing windows through the ceiling of the Grand Hyatt’s atrium, one of Yao Ming’s shoes.

The windows in front of the elevators gave the best view of the Bund, and like every other elevator full of tourists we’d gone directly from the elevator to them.

So there we were. Clear sky, a view of Shanghai as far as the eye could see, sunlight reflecting off the Yalu river. A family with a little boy came over to look out the window with us and as soon as they were next to us at the windows the boy pointed and shouted, “Look at how hairy (毛子) that foreigner’s arms are!”

We all had a good laugh at how hairy I am and I kept my sleeves rolled up. If I’d been able to speak better Chinese I’d have said, “If you like my arms you’ll love my back.” But I didn’t know the vocabulary.