Summer has arrived in Shanghai. We’ve just had weeks and weeks and weeks of rain, then all of a sudden it stopped raining and summer arrived. Wow it has been hot. Actually it’s not off the scale in terms of temperature – it’s been late 20s/ early 30s Centigrade but it is so humid it feels far warmer. We’ve had 80-90 percent humidity which in my book is just a few percentage points off being in a shower.

So walking around is pretty brutal and even a few blocks walk feels like an expedition. But that’s not the worst thing about Shanghai summers. Oh no.

The worst thing is that when it gets hot, people want to wear fewer clothes. And, as is the case all over the world, it is never the right people who take their clothes off. The young attractive people seem to wear a rather a lot of clothes even in summer – most often because they don’t want to get a tan. (Actually the Chinese think it is hilarious that Westerners try to get darker when they spend rather a lot of money on whitening treatments.) But the old guys don’t care –  they like to roll their vests up into grotesque crop tops. They are everywhere. *shudder*. The bigger the belly, the hotter it gets I guess.

That said, I have been a bit shy to take a portrait of one of these lovelies, so here’s a pic of one on the move to give you an idea. Lovely huh?

Recently I was lucky enough to witness a rare occurrence here in Shanghai. More unusual than hens’ teeth, I had a sighing of the elusive five star Shanghai taxi driver.

It isn’t a secret to most people who know me that I have issues with taxi drivers. I have had so many experiences where they have tried to overcharge me, take the very long way round, or shortchange me (you guys in Italy, you know who you are). Surprisingly I have found the drivers in Shanghai to be actually pretty good. For a start they are all locals (or seem to be) so they know the way around.  They also charge what the meter says and don’t play tricks with change. Fortunately my Mandarin is just about good enough for me to tell them where I want to go then direct them when we get close. The only downside is that they sometimes want to chat so tend to turn all the way around to look at me while doing so. Unfortunately my Mandarin is not up to asking them to look at the road ahead. Ironically, I think they are generally chatting about some idiot other driver which is clearly far from out of the ordinary here.

The trouble is, that for anyone with NO Mandarin it can be tricky, mostly because relatively few drivers speak English. Aha! you say, I have my taxi driver flash cards/ app with all the handy destinations on. Good idea (or hao zhuyi as we say here) , but a lot of them can’t actually read. Ooops.

This problem was identified a few years ago, when legions of foreigners descended on Shanghai Expo and presumably failed to get where they wanted. So a ratings programme was established. Drivers are rated between zero and five stars. There are a lot of conflicting stories about what exactly you need to do for each star, but from what I can gather, three or more stars means the driver understands some English, knows the key tourist spots in town and has not had a recent accident. Very reassuring huh?

Most of those I have used have been zero to three stars (so presumably have no English and possibly recent crashes). Actually they have been fine too. Certainly Ok enough for me to take taxis sometimes (unheard of usually). Either that or I am mellowing in my old age.

I had my hair cut today and very nice it turned out too. Nothing really out of the ordinary except for the way they section hair. You know how hairdressers usually use those plastic grip thingies to section off hair? Well they didn’t use them today – they used a person to hold bits of hair. Effective but unorthodox.