Immigration to China

Take the subway to Zhongshan Rd. (N) Station 中山北路站, located on the #1 Red line.  Exit from the north-east side of the station and walk east along the Zhongshan road 中山路 for a couple of blocks. You have to cross to the other side of Gonghexin road  共和新路 (under the North-South Elevated expressway) and the bus station will be right there. The bus station will only have one route: Shen Chong Line 1 申崇一线 , which will take you directly to Chongming Island 崇明岛. That’s it!

The bus ride will last about an hour, first taking the A12 expressway and crossing over to Pudong, and then taking the newly built freeway (Changjiang Tunnel-Bridge Expressway) to cross the Yangtze river. Buses are operated by the Chongming Dazhong bus company and the fare is a reasonable 12 yuan. The bus station on the island, located near the Chenjia township,  will have buses going in all directions, and also taxis if you don’t have much time. Beware though, the last bus going back to Shanghai leaves at 7 pm, so don’t be late!

That’s the How, and here is the Why…

Really, why would anyone want to go to Chongming island?  The journey has long been on my mind with lots of tantalizing information to consider… First, this is the third biggest island in China, behind only Taiwan and Hainan islands. The island was formed by sediments of the Yangtze river several hundred years ago and is host to huge flocks of migratory birds every season. It is also part of Shanghai municipality, yet previously only accessible by ferry, taking a very long time. But the biggest draw for me was to escape the crowded city and finally find wilderness that I crave so much.

I started doing the initial research on how to get to the island in early November, right after the bridge-tunnel opened on October 31, 2009. The perceived convenience of taking a bus was the last straw that finally motivated me to get off my butt and go for it. Boy, was I wrong – eventually having to spend much more time to figure out the Easy route, rather than just taking a ferry!

The main difficulty was the lack of English-language information on the transportation to the island. There is some pretty good info on how to get there by taking a ferry, but only confusing and contradictory information on how to get to the island by bus. One source suggested going to the bus station near the Shanghai Stadium and taking a direct bus from there.  Upon arrival to that bus station and talking to several bus drivers having lunch in their break rooms (great way to practice Mandarin :-)), it quickly became apparent that there are no regular buses departing from there. There is a tourist line operating on weekends only, round trip prices of 50 to 90 kuai, depending on the destination on the island. Unfortunately, that’s not what I was looking for, since the plan was to go to the island during the work-week (study-week), ha!

One bus driver supplied directions on how to get to Chongming Island using Shen Chong Line 2, starting in Pudong from the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. She wrote it in characters that I didn’t figure out until getting back from the island! Having spent a few more hours doing research online, I somehow became convinced that the bus line to the island starts from the Shanghai Circus World subway station, which should have been the location of the North Long Distance Bus station. Unfortunately, Shanghai has too many long distance bus stations and no good info on where exactly they are located. Either way, I decided go get to the island no matter what, even if that meant taking an expensive taxi ride. Sometimes you just have to go for it, overcome the difficulties, and find the real truth yourself, when no amount of online research will do the job…

So one sunny and warm late November day me and my girlfriend packed our lunches and took off. Dongping National Forest Park was the final destination on the island, in hope of finding a real forest in Shanghai.  After getting to the SH Circus World station and spending around half an hour walking like clowns to find a bus station, I decided to listen to my girlfriend’s advice and go to the Zhongshan road station instead, where her own research indicated direct bus line would be. Now wandering around that station began again… There are several bus stations in that immediate area that we stumbled on until we finally found the right one.

The line to Chongming was pretty easy to notice – it was a crowd of elderly people looking like village peasants, mixed with young college students like us. The line was around 100 people and we missed two buses (going every 20 minutes) until getting good seats on the third one. Somehow being in that line, on a noisy and dirty street, felt like being a sheep about to be herded somewhere. Me thinks Shanghai is still at least 20 years away from becoming a world-class city!

The ride itself was pretty comfortable, with the bus not honking too much and not exceeding the speed limit. Upon arrival to the island, we were surrounded by the taxi drivers wanting to take us to the forest park, at a cost of 90 kuai. We declined and took another two buses to get to the forest park, which took approx. another two hours… Next time will take a taxi! Spending more than half a day to get there, we only had 2 hours of daylight to walk in the park itself, and of course missing the last bus back to the city and having to take the ferry instead! But as they say, the journey is more important than the destination

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that I faced when starting this blog was a question of why I am writing these articles and what the purpose of this whole undertaking is. Some days it feels like writing is a complete waste of time, a weak form of expression that is always incomplete and never perfect… 

Am I writing for the money? Am I writing to become famous? Am I writing to reach a higher state of consciousness?

Should I write for others? Or should I write for myself? To me that’s the equivalent of the question: to be a teacher of life vs. to be a student of life.

After long contemplations I realized that writing, first and foremost, is important to ME. There are moments when I enjoy writing, and it brings amazing clarity to my thoughts. If my articles ever provide value to anyone else, that’s great. If not, that’s fine too, because at least I had a good time writing them.

How often do you see bloggers who are trying to game the system by writing posts in a specific format that caters to popular tastes, or deploying multiple SEO tricks that bring more traffic to their site? I caught myself doing it just recently, when writing the “Fighting Internet Addiction” article. After starting to write that article, I became concerned about the title and decided to rename it “How to Fight Internet Addiction” in the future. The former article would describe my own journey on the path of overcoming internet addiction, the latter would give advice from the position of a teacher.  Of course, the “How to” article might become more popular, since people like receiving advice from a teacher, a Guru, and not from someone who is just beginning to struggle with a problem himself. The original article, however, would describe my early ideas, what worked and what didn’t, my progress and the whole journey on the path of liberation from the internet from the position of a student, not a teacher.  To be fake or to be authentic, that’s the question!

It’s a pity to see so many people imitating each other like monkeys, creating blogs with similar layouts, style of writing and monetization schemes… How can they not understand that just copying other people will not bring them fulfillment!

I don’t want to write for the money. I don’t want to write to become popular.  For me writing is not about trying to become someone else, but to discover my own inner essence. I am writing to improve my life, not the other way around.