#167. Home Sweet Home (Saturday, August 24, 2002)

What was your best day…of experiencing true urban chaos?

This is probably common knowledge for most people, but it’s worth emphasizing here. Shanghai is a big city. Not only by sheer population count¹, but by how the city feels like fourteen separate cities—each with their own distinct, dense, highly-urbanized downtown areas, but in enough proximity to each other that they all still blend together into one clear municipal unit.

And so, on that front, seeing as I had spent essentially all my conscious life to this point in a city about five percent the size (Ottawa)², my one-month family trip to Shanghai during the summer before 7th grade (and the first two weeks of middle school³) was a shock. Not only the first or second time we visited a district standing next to tall skyscrapers and the loud streets literally filled with people and honking cars, but specifically doing that for the seventh time on the trip in a completely new neighborhood you have no recollection of.

I didn’t keep count, but this day’s trip—with my mom, dad, and brother—might have been the seventh one of the vacation. I never found out which part of the city I , except I recall one very large mall—with several other buildings and/or outdoor areas of note nearby. I don’t remember what we did in those other buildings/outdoor areas, but we definitely went to several; because my most vivid memory from this day was literally dodging traffic on the street—drivers in Shanghai literally do not give a damn (#40), and traffic lights and seatbelts (#63) are optional—multiple times. With what felt like life-endangering consequences if I slipped.

The only non-trauma-inducing part I do remember distinctly was shopping. I recall going to a store with a large set of cheap, Chinese-dubbed National Geographic DVDs and choosing the five that seemed most exciting to me: avalanches, volcanoes, quicksand, the Titanic, and “cameramen who dared”. I recall going to a game store, my dad asking them if they had Chinese Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (they didn’t)⁴, and me being upset at him for the rest of the day and night because I didn’t want strangers in Shanghai shopping malls to know I liked Yu-Gi-Oh!. I recall having a “serious” conversation with my mom and dad early in the evening, in some outdoor area, probably because of the above. And I recall us finally heading into the Metro station late at night, each of us carrying multiple bags of purchases (of what inexpensive merchandise, I have no memory).

But this Shanghai Metro was not the Shanghai Metro we know it is today. While it has nineteen lines as of 2026, back then it had a grand total of… three. Which meant that, naturally, every single subway car is impossibly crowded (in a way I’ve never seen a vessel of transportation crowded before)—luckily we get on at the first stop, so we get to enjoy the show of people wrestling over seats and eventually elbow room and five inches of railing to hold onto. We get off at the Cao Bao Road station, where I see the tallest person I had ever seen in my life⁵—the guy must have been seven feet and a half or something—just casually walking the platform.

We’re staying at my dad’s parents’ condo, which is conveniently located on Cao Bao Road. Though it’s quite a distance away, so we decide to take the bus. But as we approach, we see a woman having a major fight with the bus driver—a full-on screaming and violent-seeming exchange which is terrifying just to be in the proximity of and seems to go on for a good five minutes without anybody around doing anything (or the police coming). So, instead, we decide to make the trek back on foot.

And when we finally arrive at my grandparents’ unit on some very high floor, and after I dump all the shopping bags onto the table and collapse into their couch, I turn to my parents and grandparents (who don’t know English) around me and say, in the most relieved, sincere, and knowingly inaccurate way:

“Home! Sweet! Home!”

Across the ten or so different demographic definitions of “city”, it consistently ranks as top three in China and top ten in the world.
I hadn’t been to New York yet. And for the three recent trips we took to Toronto in preceding years (#98, #63), we spent a pretty much the entire like in the outskirts or Mississauga.
Because my parents thought delaying my middle school education (and more notably, giving Steven Fennessy, #16, a head start in turning half the class against me) was worth avoiding the early-August summer heat and the cheaper plane tickets.
I had been super-into the show when it came out months earlier, and the card game had been recently released.
I can’t confidently say “ever since”, as my reference point has obviously changed since.