Three Days in Shanghai

Adrienne has a rule which states that any trip where the travel time is actually longer than the time spent at the destination is not a trip that should be made.  If applying this rule, I really should have stayed at home last week.  My company, Hypertherm, has a lot of business in China and since it is China there are a few (OK there are a ba-gillion) counterfeiters and patent infringers.  Because of this, it was about time that our China team, our attorneys, and I got together to develop a plan of attack.  This was my impotence for flying to the other side of the world for three days of meetings.  It takes almost exactly 24 hours of traveling from door to door to get to Shanghai. The actually flight from the US to China is a 14 hour flight. You measure the time by the number of movies you kill on the flight. I did five on the way there.

Because of the long flight I spent a few extra of the company’s dollars to get an exit row which was so worth it.   The down side of all of this open space in front of you is that it is a place where other passengers like to congregate.  Now the elderly Chinese like their calisthenics – I think must be an old school communist thing.  So as you might expect my flight time was interlaced with various renditions of Chinese Jane Fonda (Jane Fonda, hmmm – It must be a commi-thing).  I understand the desire to use that space, but I would have greatly preferred that when the toe-touching portion of the routine came alone that they were not facing away from me.  I looked forward to the turbulence when Mr. Cee Me Bum had to return to his seat. 

While you might think that you fly over the Pacific to get to China.  The truth is that you go over Canada, nick Greenland, say hi to Santa at the North Pole, enter Siberia, come home to the Mongols, and then finally get to China.  I always make it a point to get out of my seat to look out the window when we are flying over Mongolia.  This is how Mongolia looks from 36,000 ft.  This was also the last time I saw blue sky for a week because of the perpetual cloud of pollution hanging over China.

There is a Maglev train to get you from the Airport to central Shanghai.  I insisted we take the Maglev because how do you resist a train that floats.  It tops out at 300 km/h.

I stayed at a Japanese hotel that used to be a French Club that served a great American breakfast in the middle of Shanghai. So a bit of culture mash, but a nice hotel and beautiful café for breakfast. It also had my favorite, coconut milk, every morning.  The hotel also features Japenese super toilets with far too many buttons.  All I could figure was that these buttons result in either a warm or cold wet bottom and a lot of confusion.

 One of the purposes of my visit was to present the police department and Quality Bureau of Jiang Du with a banner thanking them for arresting a counterfeiter.  One banner said they were ‘as sharp as a sword’ and the other said they were ‘as unmovable as a mountain.’  It’s a cultural thing and highly desirable according to our attorneys - sure.  There are not many foreigners in the area, so they were very excited to have a foreigner visiting.  They even had the local news there.  I was thinking that I hope they have no idea how big of a pee-on I really am.  We actually had lunch with the Quality Bureau.  One of the officers there told me I was handsome.  OK...lunch time over, time to go.

 

I was a three hour road trip from Shanghai to Jiang Du.  We had 2 twenty minute meetings and one 40 minute lunch.  Then headed the three hours back.  This totally violated the Adrienne rule. 

Though I was assured that his was the country side, we never got to place that did not have people everywhere. There are there large apartment structures everywhere with 15+ identical apartment buildings in a cluster. It is kind of creepy.

There were some beautiful green leaf oil flowers that were in bloom.  Some nice yellow color added to the polluted China countryside.

You can see how polluted things were in driving over the Yangzi river. Yuck.

One night I mentioned how much I liked Peking Duck, so they took me to a duck place in the middle of a bird flu outbreak.  So there were plenty of ducks in an empty restaurant.

Despite being a modern city, there are these little alley ways everywhere with some old-school Chinese style.

Ironically, this old school Chinese street is actually part of an ultra-western restaurant and shopping area.  So you never can tell.

Well for three full days on the ground, I am fortunate to have gotten as many photos in as I did.  I guess I will continue my Chinese saga when I get to return again in June.