Today started off dark and dreary, but ended up being sunny and beautiful!
The first thing I did today was go down Nanjing road, the Shanghai version of lake shore drive. There were stores lining the street selling watches, shoes, clothes…nike, adidas, lacoste. All fake, but people were selling them! I was hunted down a couple times by some store owners, “Do you like watches? Do you need shoes? Do you need shirts?” And they would walk with me for two blocks saying, “Come and just look at my store.” I can’t recall how many times I said “no thank you” while walking down Nanjing road.
(Cathedral a block over from Nanjing Road)
While on this shopping street, there was a huge advertisement of Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls, and some Adidas shoes he was promoting. It was pretty cool to see a Chicagoan make his presence all the way over in China. Oh, and have I mentioned how much the Chinese love the NBA? They love kuh-bee (Kobe) and luh-boo-lawn Jah-mu-shuhh (Lebron James). They pronounce “Rose” as Low-suh…something about R’s and L’s…and the NBA has a huge advertising presence in China—they have these American stars promote the environment along with other Chinese products, especially Kobe Bryant (even more so than Yao Ming!)
(I can't understand any of the writing except for "MVP". I'm OK with that)
After walking around a bit, and getting hassled by store vendors, I started to make my way towards the fine dining establishment of McDonalds. While walking, a Chinese man stops me and asks, “Are you Christian?” My response naturally was, “Who’s asking?” He said that he was a Christian and he wanted to talk to someone who shared the same belief. As this man was following me to McDonalds, he started asking me questions about my political stance: “Who did you vote for in the last election?” “Did you vote Republican?” “Do you like Obama?” “Is your father a Republican?” “You liked the Bush family, didn’t you?” I started to have some doubts that this guy was a Christian, but maybe that was because the obvious purpose of him walking and talking to me was that he wanted to find out how Christians typically vote; and that he has a preconceived notion that all Christians are Republicans. I was a little bothered by this guy, but he was kind and after he was done asking his questions he went away…odd experience.
Soon enough, the sun started peeking through the clouds and I was able to take some cool pictures over the river. I explored a different dock, a less crowded one, and was able to see some new buildings.
While hanging outside, enjoying the pretty view, I posted up with my iPad and started reading John Piper’s Desiring God, a recommendation I had gotten from a friend (reading on the iPad is nowhere as pleasant to reading on a kindle, or paper for that matter). When reading nonfiction, I typically don’t like to read something that is very deep and makes me think after every paragraph; even though this book does that, I find it (so far) to be very interesting and enjoyable. From what I’ve gathered so far, the premise of the book is that our purpose in life is to glorify God by enjoying God. It gets waaay more complicated and in-depth, but that’s the general gist of it (a pretty cool perspective, and has some solid evidence behind it!).
When it got dark, I went exploring downtown and came upon the “snow” lights hanging down from the trees along the side of the streets. In one of my first blog posts I mentioned these exact same lights in Aruba and the square in Guangzhou, and yet again here they are—in Shanghai! (thought of you, Dad).
-Alex
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