Shanghai Style

After two days in Beijing, it was off to Shanghai for a couple more days of interviews. There was even less time for touristy stuff in Shanghai than there was in Beijing. I always used to be jealous of my wife's business trips, but they're not exactly fun. My trips have one advantage over many of hers: when she's at a trade show, she probably doesn't get to see much of the city. I'm moving from building to building and neighborhood to neighborhood all day, so I at least get to see a bit of the city I'm in.

I did get to go fairly high up in Shanghai's Jin Mao Building, the tallest building in the PRC and the fifth-tallest in the world.


The building is in Shanghai's New Pudong Area, a, well, new area east of the old downtown.


Pudong was nothing but farmland 15 years ago, and much of it is still under construction. The explosive growth -- I learned this at one of my interviews -- is the result of income tax incentives given to foreign investors who wanted to develop the area. Those incentives, along with other corporate income tax incentives, will be abolished January 1, 2008. This post is starting to sound disturbingly like my story, which can't be good news. You can buy a copy of my magazine for HK$640 -- about US$80. It is on sale at Hong Kong International Airport, believe it or not.

Shanghai is a scenic city, especially the older quarters, and the air was refreshingly clear most of the time I was there. The Bund is probably Shanghai's most famous sight:


(The main advantage of going to meetings high up in office buildings is that I get some decent photos from time to time.) Famous as the Bund is, the Pearl TV Tower is definitely a more iconic view of Shanghai:


Every time I got in a taxi and looked out the window, I felt like I was in Detroit: I can't recall the last time I was surrounded by so many Buicks, most of them badged not with a simple "GM" nameplate, but with a special "Shanghai GM" nameplate.


On my last day in Shanghai, I visited a local supermarket. I had wandered in and out of supermarkets aimed primarily at foreigners, with lots of imported goods at high prices, but I found only one where the customers were primarily local. Still, there were lots of familiar brands, just marketed in somewhat different flavors:


I didn't try them, but I was curious what "Italian Red Meat Flavor" would taste like.

On my way back to Hong Kong, I got to ride Shanghai's famous maglev train, which covers 30 kilometers from Pudong to the airport in just over seven minutes and reaches a top speed of 431 km/h -- 268 mph -- midway through the journey.


The train left precisely on time, exactly 56 seconds after I shot this photo: