Shanghai 2008

This week, I'm getting to take a trip to Shanghai for work. It's my first visit to China and I'm looking forward to working with the developer team that we have here, as well as working with the diverse North American team who will also be in the same spot for the first time.

After an interminably long plane flight, six of us (Liam, Tony, Shannon, Hans, Alan) arrived from San Francisco into the relatively new and very interesting Pu-dong International Airport. On the trip to the hotel (about 45 min) we saw many different and interesting traffic monitoring devices, some extremely diverse architecture (including buildings with large communications pods that made them look like alien eye stalks), and an evening workout group practicing fan dancing with large, hot pink fans.

The Olympic propaganda and advertisement is everywhere, interestingly much of it is in English and focuses on the sustainability of the Olympics. I wonder if this includes the 10K or so exterminators they sent out to kill all the cicadas in Beijing. The cicadas are wonderfully alive and well in Shanghai and, in the 95 degree heat, they have plenty to chirp about.

We met up with Bob and Traian and went to eat in a very nice restaurant down the street (walking distance) from the Shanghai St. Regis where we're staying. The food was very good, possibly the best two dishes were a curry beef soup (photo) and a whole pan-fried fish.

After dinner, we went home and crashed. That's about all I could take.

Today was all work and a little play. The day was a good start on team building.

The morning started out with me realizing that I had forgotten my deodorant and panicking because I'm probably the sweatiest (smelliest?) North American here. I went down to the shop, which is a very nice little shop with very nice things, and asked the shop girl if they had any toiletries. It took me a second to convey what I needed and she said that they didn't have any... but then took out and offered me her deodorant! I was so surprised that I didn't quite know what to say...and I panicked a pit more, which only caused me to break out in a total sweat. What a way to start the morning. The front desk pointed me to a little store next door and I went there with a coworker and found the only deodorant there. Not the only brand... the only one can of deodorant! Yikes. 

The evening was another huge dinner followed by a walk to the Times Square area and a very cool 10 storey shopping mall. From the photo, you can see that I had a whole chicken for dinner. Actually, I had much more than that! We had rope tofu, pork buns, pork tongue, clay pot pork including skin, steamed whole fish, shrimp with lots of heads... not your typical American fare!

The walk through town was interesting. The population is young, with most of the people you see probably under 30. The residences often look pretty shabby and small with exposed wiring, chipping paint, and burglar bars on the bottom floors of the apartment buildings. The foot massage parlors really do open up and advertise at night. There are tons of people out walking, chatting on street corners, and browsing.

The Times Square area is much like the Times Square of NYC. Large light-up placards, a 10 storey shopping store (Nextage), and even a tunnel to take the pedestrian traffic under a busy street. The best thing about the Nextage was the air conditioning, though I'll head back over there later in the week if I haven't found any other souvenirs.

Tuesday was another working day, but Tuesday evening I got to do some fun things.

First we went to the 'New Fake Market' underneath the Science and Technology Museum. The museum itself is incredible. I didn't have time to look inside, but if I ever go back to Shanghai, I'm going to make a point to do so. The market itself is a veritable warren of stores that winds in and around until the buyer is surely lost. You have to bargain for everything and it helps to have some intel on what to pay before you go. I overpaid for some 'designer' t-shirts, but not too badly. My plan was to return later in the week to look for more. I was mostly comfortable except when one woman attempted to physically attempt to pull me into a stall. I don't like that.

After the Fake Market, I ditched the group and went hunting for an Aikido group in another part of Shanghai, the Xuhui district. To get there, I needed to take the subway to the South West of the city. The subway turned out to be very easy to use and cheap - about $0.60 (4RMB) to go several miles. At 7:30 at night, rush hour was over and the trains were busy, but not jam-packed. It was fun just to be people watching.

When I got to Xuhui, I left the metro station in the rain.  I wasn't sure where I should go and went into a small police station to ask directions (my Shanghai coworkers had written out Mandarin directions for me). An officer there said "best take taxi" and so I did, at the cost of 11RMBs to go about 8 blocks. Oh well.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the gentleman I had corresponded with had mixed up Tuesday for Thursday, so there was no Aikido. I walked back toward the train station in the rain, but found a very cool tea shop along the way, then took the taxi back to Pudong, a bit tired out.

I ended up having a nice north Indian meal in the hotel restaurant!

Today we had an incredible scavenger hunt through the city as a team building exercise. The hunt took us to 6 different locations in 6 hours and we were all beat by the time we ended. The locations were:

• Shanghai Science and Technology Museum - if I'm ever here again, I'll go back. We had to hurry through, but the place looked really cool; also has the new fake market
• Tallest buildings in Pu Dong -- We went to the tallest buildings in the Pu Dong area and actually ate 1/2 way up the 2nd tallest. Gorgeous view of the Oriental Pearl tower and the Bund
• People's Park -- Gigantic park on the west side of town; great museum venue
• West Nanjing Road -- Shopping and food... try a spicy squid on a stick
• Jing'an Temple -- Beautiful classic temple
• Big Bamboo bar - Great place to get toasted in a pub... enough said; very cool rugby shirts

We took the subway all day and by the end of it my feet were KILLING me. My coworkers were great and in the end, it turned out that we won the event! So we got to keep some pretty cool cameras that we were given to collect photos of our objectives during the day. My teams always win

After last night, I was fuzzy allllll day. I did manage to get some work done and then I got my second wind at about 5:00 and decided to go shopping. Taking the advice of a western Shanghai blogger, I decided to go today because it's stall payment day and I waited till near the end of the day and bargained hard at closing time. I bought a bunch of designer t-shirts and a purse for Jeanette. On the purse I was down around 15% of the starting price. On the t-shirts I was near the same. I realized in the first store that what I should tell them was that yes, I am American, but I work for a company here. That way I can tell it with an honest face and they immediately slash the price because they think I'm local.

I've always loved bargaining...