January 16-18, 2003

January 16-18, 2003

I am flying to Shanghai on my first business trip to the Far East. I have no idea how I am going to deal with the time change or the nuances of China. So I compensate by getting there early and staying at a nice hotel, the Ritz-Carlton. I leave Thursday late afternoon, arriving Friday evening, losing a day as we fly over the International Date Line. On the 14-hour flight, my seatmate is a Brit working in Shanghai at some petrochemical complex. He offers to drop me off at my hotel on his way home. The Ritz is very nice, but it turns out I could have stayed at any of the western hotels and would have been happy. I try to sleep through the night but I can't. It is morning at home.

I get to the restaurant for breakfast as soon as it opens. I was worried about the food and water, but the buffet at the Ritz is great. They have a wide variety including American and Oriental dishes, but especially wonderful fresh fruit.

After breakfast I try to overcome the jet lag and take advantage of this free vacation by getting out and seeing Shanghai. I use the hotel cash machine to get some Yuan (Chinese dollars). I also pick up a couple of hotel business cards. It has the name of the hotel and several local attractions printed in Mandarin and English. All I have to do is show the taxi driver the card and point. Taxis are dirt cheap, no more than a dollar or two.

I first head to Renmin Park (Peoples Square). Like Central Park in New York, this open space in the city center is surrounded by skyscrapers. The difference is here they are all ultra-modern. To me it looks like they had an architecture contest for a building design. Instead of choosing one, they said everybody wins and built all of them. Looking around the park I see lots of people doing exercises, probably Tai Chi. I get hijacked for a few minutes by a teacher wanting to have his students practice their English on me. Also in the park is the Shanghai Museum. I spend a couple hours perusing the exhibits. It is interesting. Jade must be something special in China as they have lots of jade artifacts.

From Peoples Square, I walk down Nanjing Lu, China’s version of Rodeo Drive. There is a mass of humanity on the street. I walk down the street east to the Bund. The Bund on the wide Huangpu River is the old commercial district of the European colonial empires. It hasn't changed much in the last century. I stop at the famous Peace Hotel there. Across the river is the futuristic newly developed commercial area called the Pudong. I drove through it yesterday from the airport. At night it looks like Times Square or downtown Las Vegas with all the lights. Most conspicuous in the Pudong is the 1500-foot Pearl Tower, third tallest TV needle in the world. 

I see a bunch more Tai Chi exercisers along the riverfront. A Chinese lad starts up a conversation with me and offers to escort me west to the YuYuan gardens. It is a traditional Chinese garden in the middle of Shanghai. A Chinese garden is a mixture of small pavilions intermixed with ponds, rocks, and horticulture. Next to the garden is a large shopping bazaar where the bargains of China can be found. I buy a couple Rolex watches for $5. (The one I give my wife stops working the second week).

From the market I take a taxi to the Jade Buddha temple. This temple has a bunch of orange-robed Buddhist monks wandering around. The centerpiece of the temple is two Buddha statues made entirely of ivory-white jade. 

For dinner I eat at a Sichuan restaurant inside a mall near the hotel. It is delicious.