First trip - Day 8 - Shanghai

Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 11:50 AM

Subject: Asia - Day 8

Shanghai seems very different from Hong Kong.  With the exception of some young people, most speak no English, and none of the taxi drivers have so far.  Shanghai feels less confining, the buildings are set back farther from the street, but the streets themselves are more crowded.  I took a taxi to our Shanghai office this morning.  Eric gave me his Chinese business card yesterday, and I used that to give the address to the driver.  The streets are wide in places, but mostly they are narrow.  The traffic consists of many taxis, a few private cars, many busses, and more bicycles and motor scooters than I expected.  All of these vehicles are trying to occupy the same narrow streets, they are all weaving left and right looking for some advantage, in fact my taxi driver moved into the oncoming lanes more than once.  Most amazingly, they get REALLY close to each other.   I’m talking a bicycle weaving between a bus and a taxi with literally inches to spare on each side – and all three vehicles were moving and weaving at the same time.  It was scary but kind of fun to watch at the same time.  They also communicate with each other using their horns.  When the taxi was coming up on some bicycles, he would sound his horn two or three times to let them know not to swerve in front of him.  You hear car horns constantly.

Today was a working day, mostly training my counterparts in the Shanghai office how to deal with headquarters in the US in this situation or that.  Pretty boring stuff.  The office shares a building with the Shanghai IKEA store.  We ate lunch in the IKEA cafeteria.  The food was cheap, I got a stainless steel coffee mug for 10 RMB, about $1.25.  If I lived here, I could bring it to IKEA every day and get free coffee as often as I wanted for three months – talk about marketing.  The coffee was really good too, it was ground and brewed in a single machine with the push of a button and came out espresso style.  In typical IKEA fashion, you had to walk a maze through half the store to find the exit, it’s the same everywhere I guess.

I took another taxi back to my hotel after work and Larry met me at 6:00 for dinner.  He took me down to The Bund, which is Shanghai’s riverfront and the city center.  To say that Shanghai has a city center is really misleading.  We are used to places like Minneapolis and Chicago that have a central district with large buildings and a city of houses and businesses spread around it.  I cannot possibly do the size of this city justice with words, pictures won’t suffice either I am afraid.   The tall buildings go on and on literally for miles.  And they are not all clustered one next to another, there may be some short buildings in between the tall ones.  If you stand on the riverfront and look across to Pu Dong, you see a magnificent skyline.  If you turn 90 degrees left, you see another, and so on.  You go 5 miles away, you see another. I used to think Chicago was big until I saw New York.  I used to think New York was big until I saw Shanghai.  I am probably laboring the point, but I just can’t get over the size and I cant very well describe it either.  You have to see this for yourself.

After walking The Bund, Larry took me to a restaurant nearby for dinner.  It was similar to the first dinner in Shekou where we were in a small private room, this one was only big enough for 4 people.  There were still three people waiting on us, very attentively I might add.  We had a very spicy beef cooked with hot peppers, same raw fish which we dipped in a sauce comprised of soy sauce and hot mustard (really good).  One note on fish in Chinese restaurants; I have yet to see a dead fish on display.  All fish are kept alive in tanks until someone orders a dish that requires one.  I guess you can’t get much fresher than that.  There was also a soup of fish stock and mushrooms, some Shanghai style pork, similar to the one last night, some crab, and Chinese beer.  Again, all was very good. 

After dinner Larry walked me through an old part of Shanghai, a real local neighborhood of two story masonry buildings with people sitting out in front, talking, playing cards, etc…  Just past the neighborhood was a district of really old buildings that have been restored and have shops on their ground floors.  Kind of touristy but pretty cool looking too.  I bought more tea.  I love the tea here.  We passed a small restaurant where a man was sitting out front with dog lying near his feet – I realized then that this was the first dog I have seen my whole time in Asia.  I hope he is not tonight’s special.

We grabbed a taxi to return to my hotel.  It was dark and all of these tall buildings I have been talking about going on for miles are now lit up with different colored Neon lights that are flashing, moving, chasing.  Some buildings are all blue top to bottom, some had only sections colored, one had blue lights that moved up each corner until reaching the top, and then would turn off and start again.  There were green, yellow and red buildings, many were multi colored.  The highway overpasses were lit from below with blue neon. 

One thing worth noting about every place in China I have visited.  It is perfectly safe to walk around at night.  I have been out rather late sometimes and I have never felt the least bit threatened, even in Hong Kong which looked pretty shabby in places.  I went for a walk this evening around the neighborhood where my hotel is located.  It was around 10:00 PM and there were still lots of people about and no one being bothered.  I passed what looked like an alley where there was a small building with a large barber pole spinning out front.  It seemed kind of odd, then I noticed the girls at the door waving for me to come inside.  I waved back and kept walking.  This is still China I guess, capitalism is alive and well and everything is negotiable.

I leave tomorrow morning.  I am excited to get home but I have really enjoyed this trip – very eye-opening  The people here have been so friendly and helpful.  Larry offered that next time I come I can stay at his house and meet his wife and daughter. I will probably take him up on this if I get the chance.  Singapore, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are all remarkable places.  They are bigger and more modern than I had imagined. 

I doubt if I will do a Day-9 unless something unusual happens. I hope you all enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them.   See you soon.