"The Great Fishing Village" a Shanghai Travel Page by janner5

I guess you can group local characters into two basic groups. The haves and the have-nots. The poorer folk are more interesting for foreigner visitors because their lives are so different. They represent the bulk of the population in Shanghai and make their livelihood through a variety of tough jobs : cleaning the streets, transporting trash for re-cycling, bicycle repairs, shoe shines etc. The man in the picture is carrying several hundred plastic bottles on the back of his "pickup-tricycle", and I was told he would earn only 8 fen per bottle (about 1 US cent). He also has to share this with his buddy who is holding up the payload on the left side....
Having lived as an expat here for two years now, I always found these kinds of people smiling, friendly and curious about me (a westerner). Sometimes groups of them would gather round with tons of questions when they found out I could manage some basic conversation.