I spent my first free day in China getting blissfully lost in the narrow streets and alleys of the Huángpǔ neighborhood right across the river from Pǔdōng. All the construction and modernization in the area since — oh, the 1930s or so — hasn’t seemed to have affected the area at all. It is an island in time and space: backdrop out of a Jackie Chan movie, filled with weird smells, fish swimming around in plastic tubs with airhoses bubbling, people passed out on lawn chairs and little hole-in-the-wall shops selling things I could only guess at. I was still interested in finding the City God Temple, but I didn’t have a map, just a vague idea of where it was relative to the Bund.

I love walking a new city. You get a feel for the rhythm of people’s lives, the coming and going, where the meeting places are. The old neighborhood is hemmed in by the riverfront office towers and warehouses on one side, and the massive, modern downtown on the other. Shànghǎi has whole zones dedicated to particular kinds of trade: pearls, electronics, fabrics, what have you. The fabrics district alone is probably bigger than Boston.

I needed some work clothes for the climb on Monday, so I checked out the Shànghǎi South Bund Soft-Spinning Material Market on Lujiabang Road figuring I could pick up a pair of cheap jeans I wouldn’t mind getting dirty or torn. The place was packed with stalls, people selling everything from scarves to tuxedos. I wasn’t looking for dress clothes - and I wouldn’t really have any place to wear them - but I did see a really bad-ass collarless blazer. Maybe in some future life where I go to a lot of formal events…

I stopped in at a stall with a hand-lettered sign that said JEANS. I asked the guy if he had a pair in my size, and he just looked at me and pointed to the rolls of denim that lined one side of the stall. I told him no, that I just wanted a pair of jeans, today. He asked me how soon I really needed them, and I told him Monday. He said he’d deliver them to my hotel. I asked him how much. He quoted me ¥140, or about $20. For tailored jeans. I said sure.

I happened to be wearing a pair of jeans at the time that I’d bought in Rome (for €100 or about $160 at the time), jeans that fit me well and that I particularly liked. He told me he could cut them in the same style, and measured me in like a dozen places. He said he’d have them delivered by 12 noon on Sunday.

I walked around the place a little more, still kind of stunned that I was getting tailored jeans for less - a lot less - than a pair of Levi’s. Down the hall was a guy selling woolen coats, and I figured I’d check it out. I have wanted a long cashmere coat since I moved to the Northeast, but the price was just too much. I found a black calf-length cashmere, in my size, with a nice, narrow waisted cut and I just went for it. Talked the guy down to the equivalent of $100, and walked out with it. Hellzyeah.

I’m at my most Italian when it comes to my relationship with clothes. Oh, and food. Okay, and I guess driving too. Anyway, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. Probably I paid even more than I could have, but I was happy, it was a sunny day, and I was in China. I kept looking for that City God Temple - even asked a Caucasian I ran into - but not having much luck and not too unhappy about it. I was just enjoying going down narrow streets and getting stares from the locals.

I eventually eased back onto the ferry, feeling the kilometers I’d walked in the soles of my feet. Back in the ‘telly, admired the way my new coat looked on me in the mirror, and wondered about getting a whole new wardrobe to match it. If I end up getting sent back to China, I’m bringing a fistful o’ yuan for the Soft-Spinning Materials Market.

With what was left of my jetlagged energy, I got myself dinner (OK, nothing special) at the Yammy Café down the street. A couple cups of soju at the bar afterwards did me in, and I rested my tired legs in bed with a Kirin Ichiban I’d bought at the Family Mart for about fifty cents, and watched a documentary about the Three Gorges Dam on CCTV until I flat passed out.

The next morning I hauled my tired ass out of bed and dragged it down to breakfast. I had another weird sleep - up at 2am checking work emails - but I couldn’t stay in bed. My last free day in China. I carbo-loaded like a fiend and headed out.

I’m a freak for tall buildings, which is kind of weird when you think about it because I’ve had a major fear of heights since I was little. I always have this mad paranoia that I’m going to have the uncontrollable urge to throw myself off whatever high point I’m on. But I was staying a half-mile from the 2nd and 5th tallest buildings in the world, and I had to go check it out, acrophobia or not. The day had dawned clear… it seemed like the greyness we’d had all week wasn’t weather, or wasn’t only weather: it was as if the sky was filled with the dun-colored clay dust. When construction stopped for the weekend, the air cleared.

Lùjiāzuǐ showed off its wealth by building big. Interpret that as you will. First there was the 468m (1,535 ft) tall Oriental Pearl TV tower. Then came the Jin Mao (”Golden Prosperity”) building at 421m or 1,380 ft and the Shànghǎi World Financial Center at 492m (1,614 ft). Next up is the Shànghǎi Center, supposed to be done by 2014, which will be, at 632 metres (2,073 ft), taller than any building on earth except for the insane, 818 m (2,684 ft) tall Burj Dubai. I was headed for the World Financial Center. No plans ever to be in Dubai, but you know I’ll be climbing that monster if’n I ever go.

The WFC observatory is way, way over the top with the Star Trek decor. The walls glow purple and the elevator is tricked out with a swirling light-show in the ceiling and space-age electronica playing low over the sound system. The observation deck, at 1500 feet, is gleaming white and offers a pretty good view to the north and south.

What struck me most about Pǔdōng from above is what I noticed on the street: the whole area is covered with rank after rank of the big mid-rise apartment towers, quite literally as far as the eye can see. I think it was that view, more than anything else, that really brought home to me how massive the human migration to Pudong had been over the 20 years since it was all rice paddies.

I crossed again on the ferry, buying two tokens for a yuan. This time, I was coming with a map which I’d bought at the Family Mart. But when I unfolded it on the ferry’s foredeck, I found that the City God Temple was nowhere to be found. I was destined to wing this. Cool.

Zhongshan Road forms a ring around Shànghǎi Pǔxī, the hypertrophic old part west of the Huángpǔ where four-fifths of the city’s twenty millions live. The part of it near the river was getting torn up and resurfaced in preparation for Expo 2010, and I walked through the dust and rubble, guided only by a vague sense that the temple was somewhere near Yuyuan Garden. That was on the map, and I cut down a side street, glad to be out of the construction mania and into the much more interesting chaos of Shànghǎi markets.

The whole area around Yuyuan Garden is made up of tourist-trap shops, and although it’s mostly the cheap crap we’ve come to associate with “Made in China” that they’re selling, it’s pretty colorful and amusing in its own right. A lot of dudes insistently tried to sell me watches, but most of them gave up when I growled bú yào. Too many easier marks who didn’t even speak crappy Mandarin, I guess.

I wandered all around the area, but didn’t find any signs for the Old City God Temple. I found the New City God Temple, and the Garden itself - a Ming-era jewel - but no Old City God Temple. No big deal. I headed off towards People’s Square.

The old horse racing park in the center of the city was the top moneymaking business in the 30s, before the war. After the Communists banned horse racing, the area was turned into a public park and the clubhouse became the Shanghai Art Museum. It’s a very clean urban park now, and a nice break from the wild capitalist frenzy that surrounded it. I paused to take a picture of the fountain in front of the Shànghǎi Museum, but had to wait while some local kids ran up to take a shot with the fountain as a backdrop. They turned out to all be English speaking, and asked me to take their picture. We ended up chatting for a bit as they practiced their English with me. They offered to take me to a Chinese tea ceremony “they had seen advertised on television,” and I said why not. It seemed almost too carefully orchestrated, but I figured there was only so much trouble an East Coast boy could get into at a teahouse.

Turned out the “kids” were in their late twenties: one supposedly from Qīngdǎo, the beer capital of China, one from Húnán, and one was supposed to be from Shǎnxī - from Xī’ān, where the terra cotta soldiers are - who lived in Shànghǎi now, and was hosting her friends. Their English was really good, and I was struck as I had been all week, how Chinese people seemed to be more like Westerners than different. There were, of course, subtle (and not-so-subtle) cultural differences, but overall, it seemed to me, modern urban people anywhere are like modern urban people everywhere. I mean, these were people whose job it was to work with Westerners, but even so, it was entirely familiar.

The tea ceremony was really cool, and I got to taste a number of different teas and learn a little bit (in translation) about ancient Chinese tea culture. I remembered hearing something about the Book of Tea at some point in my life, and the woman who was leading the tea ceremony made reference to it. There was kind of a synthesis of the three religions or traditions of China: Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The tea-drinking was somewhat stylized, but not so much so as in the Japanese tea ceremony. Of course, I bought overpriced tea: I have some awesome jasmine oolong that I’ve been enjoying (along with my beloved espresso) since I’ve been back.

The Shǎnxīese woman said she was an instructor of Chinese linguistics and that she would help me learn Mandarin over Skype. We’ll see how that goes, but I decided that I had to learn the language now that I got a start. It sort of started to make sense to me after a week in the country, and I figure I should really take advantage of the opportunity. Being in China really gives you the sense that this is the rising power, and that the US is in a decline that may take many years, even centuries… but the future largely belongs to the Chinese.

Exhaustion hit me. I ended up taking the metro back to the telly, after saying goodbye to the “kids.” I was also a little concerned about the climb, and my last shot at making the system work while I was inside China. They were going to the circus, but something

I ended up having a 25-cent Tsingtao beer in honor of my new “friend” from Qīngdǎo.