As many of you reading this already know, I am on an extended business trip in Asia (couple weeks in Malaysia, and a few days in Shanghai in the middle). There's some other business travel on the horizon, but the big news is about our move to China. Steph and the kids and I are packing up and heading to Shanghai for a couple of years. I will be taking a temporary assignment (expatriate assignment) with Intel, and she will be a stay at home mom. I am not sure who will have the tougher job - but considering we are going to China where very few local people speak English but I get to go to Intel everyday with people who all do speak English, I'll give her the nod on the toughest job competition.
Today was my first free day in Shanghai (Saturday) and I was able to ease into the city by having a couple of excellent tour guides. The current General Manager of my group (TW Tan) and an expat from Malaysia to Shanghai (CS Lee), were generous enough to show me around the city. Not only are they very familiar with the city, they both speak Mandarin!
For the sake of brevity, I will share my general thoughts about Shanghai in another post. The point of this one is to talk about today, and really share the pictures with family and friends (note: you can click on the pictures to see them in a larger size). I have to insert the caveat that I remain a China and Shanghai neophyte, so please forgive misspellings and sometimes vague references to 'cool shopping places'... I am doing the best I can after a combined lifetime 36 hours in China!
First off, I am staying at a great business hotel. For those of you familiar with the Shangri-La chain, I would highly recommend the Shangri-La Pudong, if you don't mind being on the West side of the river. Many people prefer the Renaissance or other hotels, which are on the Puxie (East) side of the river, as it is closer to nightlife and shopping, but as far as the rooms and the view (and being on Intel's preferred vendor list), I don't think you can go wrong here! I am trying to get these pictures from my camera phone to my PC to post here - great shots from my hotel room window.
I was incredibly lucky today. The weather was amazing - beautiful sunny day. Now, as some of you know, beautiful sunny day in Shanghai is not the same as beautiful sunny day in Columbus, or Portland... Think more like LA. Shanghai has a pollution problem... Kind of a big one. But on a Shanghai scale of 1-10 for beautiful days, this was a 9.5! I added the picture, since so many people tell me how rare it is to have a day like this in Shanghai. I titled the picture 'What Pollution?'.
Today started with an hour and a half drive to Suzhou. While on the face of it, an hour and a half might seem like a long time to drive, but considering it takes 30 minutes to get from one side of the river to the other (traffic and road layout are 'interesting'), an hour and a half seemed like a reasonable investment. The primary purpose for this trip was to go to the well known Suzhou Gardens. TW tells me there are 4-5 really well known gardens in China, and this is one of them.
The trip was worth it. This garden was built by a retired politician, who moved out to Suzhou and built this 'retirement complex'. The classical Chinese Garden covers 5 acres and was pretty amazing. Having visited the Chinese Garden in Portland (a project Stephanie's Aunt Nancy worked on with her partners at Robertson, Merryman, Barnes) it was really a treat to see 'the real thing'.
TW and CS and I walked through the garden, but did not take advantage of a guide. We were not planning an entire day in the garden, and at 5 acres, you can imagine how long a guided tour would have taken. TW did a good job of hitting the
highlights, educating me on the high level timeline of the dynasties, and at least ensuring I saw all the garden... Although he jokingly offered a couple of classic tour guide moments in which he said, "This is very famous, but honestly, I can not remember why... You should look it up on the internet when you get back to hotel". I could not help but wonder how many real tour guides get to something they either don't know, or can't remember and just make it up, knowing these are all tourists and won't know the difference? I laughed a little to myself thinking about a tour guide in the US with a bunch of foreign visitors at the Lincoln Memorial: "Yes, this is the monument of the great sitting man... he was instrumental in the founding of the United States... unfortunately, we don't have time to go into much more detail, as we need to get you to McDonald's before the lunch crowd for your complimentary Official American Lunch, Super Value Meal #1, Large Sized'.Next we had lunch in a popular Chinese restaurant where we enjoyed some of the more well known local dishes. I included some pictures of the 'cold chicken' starter, and the deep fried sweet and sour fish. Surprisingly to me, they were both tasty. OK, that was a little 'tour guide, they'll never know the truth moment'. The cold chicken was not something I have a stomach for, but the fish was tasty, as was the rest of the lunch.
Then we did some shopping. First in Suzhou, and then we drove back into Shanghai and hit a couple of local shopping areas (note the 'I can't remember what they were called, and since I don't speak Mandarin, probably won't be back until I have a local guide again' ambiguity). I have included a couple of pictures of these places as well. Couple of early thoughts about shopping in Shanghai:
- Everything is negotiable - even when it looks like it's not... I have to thank my Mandarin speaking friends for getting me as good a deal as I did - but unfortulately TW exercised a little social experiment and negotiated on the exact same item I had bought at a previous store a few minuted earlier... would have gotten it 10RMB (about $1 or $2) cheaper!
- White people are magnets for people wanting to pull you into an alley to look at Rolex watches, Designer Handbags, and DVDs... I guess these reputable vendors are just trying to avoid the overhead of paying rent for an actual store... that's why they do business out of the back of their 1992 VW Passat in an alley. Capitalism within Communism at it's finest!
- I joked about things being cheaper in China than the US since it's all made here and it doesn't have to be shipped to America... I no longer joke about it, I am pretty sure it's true. There are lots of different quality levels, and there is plenty of junk, but in general, goods are cheap.
- As if we needed more proof, there is a Starbucks EVERYWHERE!
We made a quick stop at The Bund. The Bund is a street that runs along the East 
side of the river. It is interesting for a number of reasons. Here are a couple, that I was able to document in pictures. All of the buildings along the street were built in the 20s, 30s and 40s. They all have a history of what they were when they were built and each flew the flag of the country that owned the building, or the country where the company in the build was headquartered. Now, almost without exception, the buildings are banks, and all fly the flag of the PRC. The great thing, is that they all have kept the architechtural integrity of when they were built. It's really an interesting area.
Another interesting thing about The Bund is this picture I snapped of the Pudong (West Side of River) skyline. This is the skyline you are inevitably going
to see when you Google 'Shanghai'. This is a day time view, but the pictures you are liable to see are the nightime view when the skyline is awash in Neon... Honestly, Vegas has nothing on the Pudong Skyline. It's skyscraper after skyscraper, with lights and neon and then the famous 'globes' of the Oriental Pearl (far left in this picture). Pretty impressive, but makes Shanghai seem more like New York City on steroids than the China of which we traditionally think.
After shopping, we picked up another collegue that has a late flight out tonight and headed to a local chinese food restaurant for Shanghainese Chinese Food. It's hard for me to describe all the differences, but in general, I have found the food all very good. I have done a good job of sticking to my 'don't eat food you can get at home while in Asia rule' and have found all the food pretty enjoyable (cold yellow chicken, with head on plate for presentation aside).
That's it for day 1 in Shanghai.
Part of the reason TW wanted to tour me around was to insure I enjoyed the city and didn't back out on taking the assignment. I think he was only half joking when he explained this to me. I really think he has nothing to worry about. I anticipate this is going to be a tough transition for the family as we deal with cultural changes, language issues, being away from friends and family and my really challenging job. On the other hand, I also see this as an amazing opportunity to strengthen our trust in God, our trust in each other, and learn more about this area of the world and this culture than we ever could have from Beaverton, OR!
Steph and I will be back here in early June for a house and school hunting trip. Expect more news from us then!
