Shanghai Alongside

Shanghai port appears to continue beyond the curvature of the earth. We berthed among rows of cranes and stacks with no visible end, a landscape made from repetition on a scale my eyes could not comfortably organise. Every attempt to locate a boundary merely revealed another line of structures. I gave up before the port showed any sign of doing so.

There is something humbling about arriving somewhere that makes the ship seem part of a much larger arrangement. From sea, she can feel like the entire available world. Alongside here, surrounded by steel and the immense geometry of a port, she becomes one substantial object among many. I watched the ranks of containers and tried not to imagine how little use I would be asked to organise them.

My shore window was small. Fortunately, my provisioning methods are becoming rather focused. I returned with scallion crackers, sesame wafers and a box of biscuits chosen entirely because the shopkeeper pointed at it with conviction. I understood the conviction more readily than I understood the box, and decided that this was an acceptable basis for a commercial relationship.

The packets made their familiar reassuring rustle on the return. Scallion crackers and sesame wafers promised variety; the box promised whatever the shopkeeper had believed in so firmly. Travel sometimes asks you to exercise judgement with incomplete information. I prefer doing this in situations where the likely consequence is a biscuit. Back among the apparently endless cranes, my purchases looked modest, but they represented a manageable and thoroughly satisfactory piece of Shanghai.