I arrived in Shanghai on Guo Qing Ri (Chinese National Day) - the first day of the country’s public holiday week.
To me, it’s usually a bad week since factory / supply chain colleagues are all out of office, there’re often late delivery, back orders, and no one will reply you even when your feet are on fire. However, this year was a different experience altogether. I considered myself lucky, as what other better occasion I could have to watch “ren shan, ren hai” (people mountain, people sea), other than on the notorious Golden Week when everywhere will be so packed with people that even locals wouldn’t want to travel around.
Just so that it’s easier to imagine, there are 23 mil people living in Australia, slightly less than Shanghai population of 24mil, while occupying slighly more than 1,000 times the land area. I swear I have never ever seen, or been on the same street with that many people before, in my entire life. Entire life. Auntie even told me 4 people died here last year during Guo Nian.
No wonder so many policemen were deployed, to make sure the whole area would be in order.
From the very start of the pedestrian shopping street Nanjing Lu: *hey I bet that just crossed your mind too*
Till the very end, covering a total distance of 1.7km. One about 3 meters away from the other, they peacefully split up the crowd into halves. Traffic because of that became much smoother. The sea of people flowed without any hiccup.
Everyone looked THIS serious, even when I tried to smile at them, or gave them a curious stare. Such is the ultimate level of professionalism. Hehe.
The human wall continued along side Huangpu river. Not only monitoring the traffic, they were very helpful to tourists, and super patient to me even when I mixed up all my tones and pronunciations.
This was when I was impressed the most. I realized that indeed, one is most attractive when he or she is fully into the job, with bursting joy, unyielding dedication and an admirable, admirable passion. Like the doctor, and like the educator too.
Good job everyone! Thanks to you, I’m sure the night was all pleasant and enjoyable despite the seemingly overwhelming crowd. At least I was really happy, my heart’s smile was even bigger than this:
