Saturday 10/8

Jumped on a plane for Shanghai! 2-week work trip. Boston to Newark was easy. Nice views out the window.

Boston from the air

But then had to perform a mad dash thru the airport “Paging passenger Chadwick! Final boarding call for flight 87Y to Shanghai!” Heheh, good exercise.

Then the long haul over the pole. Fourteen and a half hour flight time. Not too bad, lots of free seatback movies & TV & music, plus arcade games. Jason you would have loved it.

Liz, I used your earplugs to help me sleep, thanks! Catnaps more than anything. Your purple note is my new bookmark.

Nice sunrise views as we flew over the ice & clouds. It felt like a long flight, but watching four movies (or was it five?) helped a lot.

Cab ride. I liked the bubble of plastic around the driver. He drove like a madman, weaving in and out of open spots in the highway. It felt like about 90 mph, except when he slowed down to pass under the (obvious!) speed trap cameras.

Lots of apartment buildings, and tons of power lines.

Sky Fortune is a pretty nice hotel. I like the funky hallway lighting. I have to get a pic of the giant lobby.

A room pic for the kids.

View out the window. Lots of honking cars. Nice to see a dedicated lane for the motor scooters!

Night version.

Sunday 10/9

Had a decent night’s sleep. Feels like my body is already in the new time zone. Thanks Nan for the melatonin schedule, it’s working well! Kids wanted to see the swanky hotel lobby:

There’s a very busy intersection right outside the front door. Here’s the view from the stairwell, which no one seems to use. The drivers honk incessantly, it has to be louder than Manhattan out there.

And the street-level view. I walked a couple blocks, then hailed a cab for the drive in to the center part of town to see the Shanghai Museum.

On the way, I spotted this sign outside the entrance to a city hospital. Awesome! Great mental image.

Central atrium of the Shanghai Museum. I was surprised there was no price for admission, just a line for a pretty casual x-ray inspection. Although the guards did have me take a sip from my water bottle, I guess to make sure it wasn’t combustible.

Tons of beautiful art, a feast for the eyes. Ancient bronze implements, calligraphy of many different styles, gorgeous painted scrolls, intricate jade sculptures. Here’s a monkey raiding a bee hive, from the Qing Dynasty (early 1700s).

A 1748 painting of the philosopher Confucius. He has a super-long fingernail, right above the bird’s head，I wonder what that’s all about.

There were so many amazing things. Tibetan mask, about twice as big as the performer’s head:

Leaving the museum, I walked into Renmin (People’s) Park, basically the heart of Shanghai. Not as much fun as People’s Park in Berkeley! It was such a gorgeous day today, plenty of sun and mid 80’s with a light breeze. Click on the photo for a bigger view!

At the busy intersection North East of the museum, they had elevated walkways for crossing to each corner, and admiring the retro-futuristic architecture.

There are also some cool little market streets to the North, where only the locals seem to go. Grubby shopkeepers eviscerating or boiling various items. I was the only foreigner for many blocks. Just walk thru like you do it every day. It’s so much fun being in such a different place, sometimes I had to laugh out loud at the realization that I’m actually here, right now. Goofy foreigners.

On the cab ride back, the skyscrapers just wouldn’t quit. The hotel is in the South West outskirts of town, but it seems like the city just keeps going on and on, highrise after highrise.

I wonder what this city will look like in ten years?

Monday 10/10

Foggy day today. Heading to the first day of work. I decided to walk, it’s about a mile or so South of the hotel. Click for a bigger view.

The Colonel is popular here in Shanghai. I walked into one near the museum yesterday, but couldn’t bring myself to purchase his greasy fried goodness.

I discovered there are basically two ways to get to the office on foot. One is a barren sidewalk next to a noisy freeway; the other is a local road full of shops. I was glad I took the latter.

Shanghai is full of resourceful people, carrying all sorts of things. No helmets though. And I’ve seen a lot of near misses.

The office.

Lobby entrance. Some group was taking a photo. Cool bench-couches, that no one seems to have the nerve to sit on. Is it art or seating?

Office layout is packed, but nice. Only open spot is the corner office. Nice but a bit too quiet. Wish I was out on the main floor.

Ike treated me to lunch in the new-ish noodle/rice bar they have. Looks like no cash is accepted, have to swipe your company card. Tasty noodles!

There’s a FamilyMart with all the cool treats you could want. Bought some of the SoyJoy fruit bars for later, one orange, one plum.

After work, walked back to the hotel. The freeway sidewalk proved to be as boring and loud as it looked, except for this cool sculpture. They should have made it into a tower of hands, grabbing thumbs.

I leave you with a shot of water. The mist started to fall as I left the street.

I pass by this jade sculpture every morning. About the size of a basketball. Something  very sensual about it. Like a cabbage concubine lounging on her divan.

Tried the hotel gym this morning. Lots of very specific heavy-duty equipment. No rowing machine, so I rode a stationary bike. The rest of the patrons were all in the pool in the back.

Walking to work I see the other commuters. The lady on the back was holding a toddler. Hired ride?

Fruit vendor. I bought some sweet crunchy apples, and a few clementines. Is that sugar cane standing up in front?

My workspace. Usually it’s a meeting room. Nice to have the breeze from the windows, but it’s a bit too quiet in there.

I pass by this hospital every day on my walk to work. Tonight there was a drumming class in one of the front rooms. A dozen ladies drumming together. Therapy?

Wednesday 10/12

Getting into the groove of things. Always something interesting to see on the morning walk.

Steve M warned there would be no pharmacies. Well, what do you know? A fully-stocked over-the-counter store, with a helpful clerk. On Hongmei Rd, South of Wuzhong, on the way to work.

However, I don’t know Chinese and he didn’t know English, and all the packages were Chinese text with no pictures. I didn’t need anything, but if I did I suppose I could always try pictionary.

Bicycles outside a metro station.

Delivery man taking a break with the newspaper.

Lunch in the commissary today, Dylan’s treat.

Lunch pic for the kids. See the little Viennese wieners? Also there were little bird eggs, about the size of my thumb. Across from me are Steam Bian’s dumplings, he let me have a couple, classic Shanghai dish.

Ike, Steam, Tao, Ray (seated), and I discussing work.

The walk back to the hotel is always lively. It’s a great scene, lots of little kids playing on the sidewalks, in front of their parents’ shops.

Going to try a video upload, let’s see if this works. Big hotel with animated LEDs all down the front. Click the image to see a QuickTime movie.

Thursday 10/13

I love walking down this street to get to work.

These guys cook and sell treats off the backs of their bicycles, for the morning commuters exiting the subway in front of our office. I’m sure it’s super cheap, and probably tastes great, but the lack of sanitation is a bit of a deterrent.

Steam asked if I like spicy food. Then took me out for lunch at a noodle restaurant he likes. Pork ears! The cartilage was a little crunchy, but they were certainly tasty. His noodle bowl came with duck stomach, which was surprisingly good as well.

Someone came into the office with some Chinese grapefruit, apparently what we call pomelo in the West. Much nicer flavor than grapefruit: firm and mildly sweet but no sourness.

Ike snapped a shot of me at my desk.

Took the Shanghai subway to dinner. Very clean subway, but it was the most packed ride I’ve ever taken. The car was already full, and we barely fit in. It’s smart they have the glass doors to keep people from falling off the overcrowded platforms.

Hot Pot for dinner. A classic dish served like fondue. Very spicy broth, and very tasty!

A selection of meats and vegetables went in, including a smoky marinated tofu. The most unusual for me were these strips of pork stomach.

It was a rainy night. Interesting awning on this motorcycle taxi.

Friday 10/14

Breakfast in the hotel lobby. Coffee, fruit, and random dumplings.

A smile goes a long way. On the way to work, a shy toddler and his nice grandmother.

Giant pot full of coal, and cooking on the sidewalk.

This boy seemed dumbstruck by the foreigner with the camera. I think she was begging him to smile for me.

Commuter with her breakfast.

Ha. One of our office park neighbors.

Moon rise.

Saturday 10/15

I was treated to some excellent Chinese hospitality today. Aaron and Panzhu gave me an all-day walking tour.

On the way to meet them, a splash of resident color.

We took the subway, which I learned is the largest system in the world. Aaron is checking his tablet for the best route.

One of the streets outside the City God Temple, a historical re-creation shopping area with an active Taoist temple in the center.

It was like Disneyland at rush hour. Wall to wall people. Bigger image if you click.

Inside the temple, people were burning incense sticks and praying to a selection of gods… the god of wealth, a general-god who died in the Opium Wars, and more.

Old Chinese women were tying red prayer ribbons onto wooden bars below these sculptures.

A sculpture on the temple roof.

A traditional arch “paifang” at the entrance to the temple.

Just outside the temple district, monumental apartment complexes.

Next we took a taxi across town to get some lunch in the Taikang Lu arts district. A cute warren of shops, galleries, and cafes populated with Western tourists and young Chinese on dates.

We picked a Japanese barbecue restaurant called Tai Guo. Thinly-sliced meats, long thin mushrooms, and shrimp for the tabletop grill. Fresh fruit on the side.

Next we took the subway out to the Bund for a walk along the historic waterfront. Crowded! But the view of the Pudong skyscrapers was simply unreal, like a gleaming model railroad set.

A bride, in front of a passing cargo ship, in front of the tallest building in China.

Bottle-opener building. Not a camera lens artifact… reflected sunlight was casting godrays through the smog.

Aaron’s friend Yiyabo met us at the Qibao subway station. He was born and raised in this area, so he offered to feed us the best from each shop.

He took us to a hole-in-the-wall dumpling restaurant with a little seating gallery upstairs. You pre-pay then walk through the kitchen to get to the tiny near-vertical stairwell in the back.

He left us there, to fetch goodies from other vendors. This is the “stinky tofu” people told me about. Tasty, but also very earthy, evoking a bit of farm yard.

Yiyabo and Panzhu. There’s a white Chinese sign posted a couple times on the wall; I asked what it meant. It says “No outside food!” but Yiyabo waved it away with a smile.

It was a bustling marketplace with every kind of store. These mannequin heads made an interesting pattern.

There was a public square at the South end. A large group of women were gathering for their nightly after-dinner dance. It was mesmerizing to watch them perform a coordinated tai-chi-like dance to music on a Chinese boombox. No men do this dance, only the women.

Sunday 10/16

Took it easy on my feet today, just walking around in the neighborhood, and getting lots of sleep. Feeling a bit overwhelmed being a foreigner and not knowing the language. Dinner was homestyle, room service pizza and salad.

Monday 10/17

Every day I walk from the hotel to the office. It’s about a mile or so, but it seems to go quickly. Today I tried the sidewalk on the East side of the expressway. An apartment block facing one of the many canals that snake through Shanghai.

A couple delivery guys chatting as they drive.

A couple food carts in front of the Cisco building.