Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have the opportunity to travel to the Far East. Both in terms of money and time, it was one of the those parts of the world that I could only ever dream of and assume it wouldn’t materialise. However, when my son asked me if I’d like to go to Shanghai, I realised that there was really no reason to say ‘No’. Alhamdulillah, a perfect opportunity had presented itself and I would be crazy to let it pass.
The week spent there was beyond my wildest expectations! I relished every minute and enyoyed the sights, smells and sounds all around me. It was a culture I had not been immersed in before yet was exactly what I wanted to experience – something very different from Europe.
The first thing that hit me about Shanghai was it’s sheer size. The city is an endlessly sprawling metropolis with tower block after tower block vying for space in the sky. Not surprising how many of these there are given the burgeoning population (around 28 million people). Yet surprisingly enough, most of these concret needles didn’t feel they were suffocating the life out of the city. Everywhere around us, there was always a healthy sprawling green canopy lining streets and parks. At street level, there are countless wide urban streets with many raised highways on bridges. The scale of infrastructure construction is stupendous and we saw so many buildings and bridges still on their way to completion. Thousands of cars, mopeds and bicycles all traverse the city with an amazingly seemless precision and yet the city’s transport network functions so well. To call it organised chaos would be disingenuous as chaos isn’t what I saw. Meanwhile, below street level, the metro functions so smoothly and efficiently delivering millions of people to their destinations every hour or every day.
As a Muslim, I was warned beforehand about the possible difficulties of finding halal eateries in China. However, we were pleasantly surprised and didn’t feel we missed on local Chinese culinary delights. We tried local dishes from hotpot, meat skewers, beef noodles to octopus. So many times I had to pinch myself to remind myself I was not simply in Chinatown in London but in China proper. It was a totally surreal experience. SubhanAllah!
In fact, there were many times I was walking around Shanghai and kept experiencing deja vu moments where one moment in my head I was in Jeddah, then Dhaka and yet again in Istanbul. So many sights reminded me of my past experiences in other places I have lived or visited in the world. As I described to others, in the week spent there, I was whisked on a world tour in my head. My senses were constantly catapulted between one part of the world to another and the stimulation was unreal. So much felt strangely familiar.
The famous cityscape, with the world’s third tallest skycraper, was a phenomenal sight. As much as I love nature and the peace that encompasses it, I also love the other extreme where bright lights and tall towers vy for attention. It was all mesmerising and no photos could capture the delight that it produced. I was in awe of man’s creative abilities and the fact that I was fortunate enough to experience all this.
To summarise my Shanghai experience in one blog post would be to do it an unbelievably gross disservice. It reawakened within me the desire to see more of the world and perhaps even live in another place. It reaffirmed to me that I wish to experience another way of life insha’Allah, before I leave this world forever. As much as England will always be home, there is a soullessness which I have always felt has been lacking. The thing that prevents me now from packing up and moving away are family commitments. However, I will always hold onto the dream of trying something new still. I have always found people who have lived and experienced an alternative lifestyle to myself, to be very interesting. I am grateful that I have done this kind of thing myself already but I still hope to try it again soon, insha’Allah. There is so much to see and do still that I know will feed my soul. For years, I have tried to fill that gap here but to no avail. I am in no doubt that it will only every be achieved elsewhere and I am grateful to Shanghai for proving that to me.
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