Shanghai Part 3

The middle weekend we were in China we spent Saturday seeing some of the sights in Shanghai.

The view driving into downtown Shanghai. It was almost always hazy and overcast. The building on the right is the SWFC (Shanghai World Financial Center). It's the one that looks like a can opener. It's about 1500 feet tall, at one point we were in a bar near of the top of the building.

We started our tour at a shopping area, I have no idea exactly where. Actually most of the time I had no idea where we were.

The building were all very old looking, there were walking paths between them.

Many if not most buildings were decorated for the Chinese New Year.

Just like in the states, there were corporate logos sprinkled among the decorations.

There were always a few places that made me feel almost like home.

One of the things you always notice, you can be looking at very old buildings and yet in the background, there are always very modern skyscapers and new buildings going up everywhere.

I have no idea where this said, but I know a pepsi logo when I see one.

In the middle of the shopping area was a set of ponds with scenes from what I can only guess is an old Chinese fable setup for the new years. As you can see there were people everywhere..

Our next stop was Yuyuan Garden, an ancient garden somewhere in downtown Shanghai.

In the middle of thousand year old buildings you can see the new Shanghai Tower going up in the background.

Where we were shopping.

One of the chefs where we ate lunch. I think she was making some kind of dumplings.

Cute bumper sticker, I have no idea what it says.

Shanghai part 2

After several days of working we got the chance to head into downtown Shanghai at night. We had dinner at a great steakhouse called "Moon's Steakhouse", spent some time walking around seeing all the lights, then spent some time in the House of Blues and Jazz.

Downtown Shanghai is split into 2 areas by the Huangpu River which is a branch of the Yangtze River. This is the older side called Puxi. This is looking down a boardwalk type area on the river on the Puxi side called The Bund. It's a big tourist area and was full with people.

Most of the buildings on the Puxi side of the river are older. You can see why it's been called the "Paris of the East".

Looking across the river to the Pudong side. The Pudong side is where most of the newer buildings are. There are so many lights, it's very amazing.

The Oriental Pearl Tower, one of the icons that Shanghai is known for.

The lights are amazing, and change continually.

One of the many river boats. We were going to take a dinner cruise but it was too late by the time we decided to do it, and when we were downtown several days later it was way too cold.

So many of the buildings are covered with lights.

Some things are the same no matter where in the world you are.

We finished the night at a bar with a band from Boston, with a lead singer from Detroit. After a week of Chinese it was nice to hear some hometown English..

Our favorite bartender, Victor.

Shanghai China

I got to spend 2 weeks in China working this winter. We are working on a new plant for Ford there. First of all let me say it's a long, long flight. It's about an hour from my house to Chicago, then a 14 hour flight from there to Shanghai. I have a hard time sleeping on flights so by the time we got there I was pretty out of it. 
It took us a while to get from the airport to the hotel. We had dinner at the hotel although I barely remember it, I was running on fumes by then. The 13 hour time difference also took me almost 2 weeks to get used to, just in time to come home. I've been home a week and I'm still not really back on normal time. I'm posting this at 6am on a Saturday morning, and I've been up since 4am.

It will take me a couple of days to go through all the photos and figure out which to post. Mostly we worked, but did have a few days to go sightseeing.

The view from my hotel room the first morning. I was up at about 3am since my internal clock was completely messed up. It was pretty cold the whole trip, low 40's the first week and low 30's the second week. Most days were very overcast or hazy, we didn't see the sun very often. First thing you notice is the number of cranes, they are building everywhere. The other thing you notice is the mixture of old things with very new things.

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This is where we stayed. It was very modern but almost completely empty. We rarely saw anyone else that was staying here. They don't bother heating much, the common areas were always very cold. The staff was wonderful, very helpful, even if most didn't speak English and we spoke only a few words of Chinese, mostly hello, thanks, and beer.

The front of the hotel.

The fountains in front of the hotel. We never saw them run the whole time we were there. Our trip was just before the Chinese New Year so most people and companies were winding down since most people travel home for the spring festivals.

My hotel room. It was similar to many I've stayed at in the states with a few exceptions. We got a plate of fresh fruit and a bottle of beer everyday. I ate all the fruit and mostly ignored the beer. By the end of the first week I had a mini fridge full of beer and had to convince them, using only hand gestures, to stop bringing me more beer. The other differences were 40 channels of TV but only in Chinese, nothing in English, not even CNN or BBC. I didn't watch any time the whole trip. The bed was hard as a rock. Finally, the room was cold, I adjusted the thermostat up but it never made much of a difference. I just assumed they saved money by disabling it. One night it was so cold I slept fully dressed, including my hoodie. It was only a day or two before we left I finally figured out it wasn't enough to enough to change the temperature setting, there was button inside it you had to turn it on.The last night sleeping was much more comfortable.

Our favorite restaurant for lunch, I have no idea what the name of it was. We were lucky, there were several other people from the US there. They had a driver and knew were to eat, and what to order.

Ordering lunch. Every restaurant we tried had a huge menu, but thankfully with pictures. They usually put us in our own private room with a round table, with a glass lazy susan in the middle. We usually ordered a bunch of different meat and veggie dishes which were shared with the whole group. Overall the food was great, in addition to lots of beef, pork and chicken, we tried things like duck and bear. However nobody wanted to try dog.

One difference from the US is that the fish came complete with head and tail, the shrimp and prawns came whole and the meat usually came with bones and such. It took some work to pick out the good parts with chopsticks.

After someone ordered all the food it came one dish at a time and usually didn't stop until the time we stopped eating. Rice was usually served last. Everyone had a cup to eat out of and a dish for scraps. As someone spun the middle around you picked up with chopsticks anything that looked good. For me it was more like attempt to pick up, I was good with peanuts and most meat, but anything like noodles or slippery veggies it took several attempts to hang onto them long enough to make it to my bowl.

At first I couldn't tell you anything that I was eating, but by the end of the trip we started to know the names of many dishes and had my favorites. The kung pow chicken was one of them.

Watching the super bowl on laptop. Since Shanghai is 13 hours ahead of US Eastern time it was on Monday morning. The net connection wasn't wonderful so the most common thing we saw was the "buffering" message. The other odd thing about China was how many websites are blocked by the government. I wasn't able to post on the trip because blogspot is blocked.

The building we were working in. It was big enough to fit the entire assembly line which was a nice change. It was in an industrial area so there was building after building. On the down side, they didn't heat it and it was cold most days, other days we were freezing. It's hard to work on your laptop when your fingers are numb. The offices in the front of the building had space heaters so we never spent more than an hour on the plant floor before we found an excuse to go up front and warm up.

Our favorite electrician Jack. Notice he's wearing a winter jacket and hat. We only spoke a few words of Chinese and he spoke only a little English but with lots of pointing and gesturing we managed to get everything working. Next post will be sightseeing from downtown Shanghai.

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