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I’ve been Shanghai-ed!!

Yawn…� It’s been a long time since anything has happened here, huh?? I’ve received a few notes here and there from some of you expressing concern.� To answer Lucelu – yes, I’ve been very, very busy!!� I have much to write about in the weeks coming, but I will start today with my trip to Shanghai! (Donna H – you know I still haven’t written about my trip to Paris and London this summer!!)

�I have to say, I love, love, love Shanghai!� The people are very friendly (albiet hard to understand), and they really love Western culture.� The city of Shanghai is very modern on the Pudong side, with lots of mish mash on the Puxi side.� The Pudong area is the “downtown” area of Shanghai, and is China’s central banking and financial district.� From what I understand, this area was all farmland about a decade ago… The pictures below are from the hotel window, overlooking Pudong.� You can see all of the construction.� Shanghai is to host the 2010 world fair, and they are working hard to create a modern, beautiful city.� There is poor air quality, but there are aggressive plans in place to clean it up before then.

One of the first things I wanted to do while in Shanghai was to check out the fabric shopping (duh!!).� I had heard of a four floor building full of textile merchants!! WOW!!� Before I went there though, I had to get some experience as to how to get about Shanghai, converse with the cabbie, etc.

If you ever go to Shanghai, you should first know that the cabbies DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH!� Almost all of the streets are labeled in both Chinese and a phonetic variation of Chinese called “pinyin”. But the cabbies can’t read it!! Doh!! And to make matters worse, much of the internet is blocked from inside Shanghai by “The Great Chinese Firewall” (including my website).� Additionally!! – if that wasn’t enough – there is no mapquest in English! There is a Chinese Mapquest, if you enter where you’re going in Chinese, you can print out the map for the cabbie. I found a really good site for learning Chinese, and translating, for free online. It is www.xuezhongwen.net, and it is accessible from within China. Another useful tool for traveling in China is having the Chinese keyboard installed on your computer. If you type something in pinyin, it will auto-magically translate it to Chinese characters, which you can also print out. I was very fortunate to have brought a laptop with me (I have a brand-new MacBook Pro that is AWESOME).

… to be continued…

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One Response to “I’ve been Shanghai-ed!!”

Comment from Donna Hodgson
Time February 11, 2008 at 5:43 pm

So glad to hear from you. Happy you weren’t Shanghai’d. (sorry)
Looking forward to another installment.