Shanghai [Part 1: The Trip West]

A couple months ago I received an email from a GDC China organizer inviting me to speak in Shanghai this year.  They'd pay for my flight and hotel room.  I said sure, I'm interested.  Actually, I was not that excited about traveling alone to the other side of the world, leaving Laura to deal with the kids.  However, when else would I get to travel to Shanghai?  I figured this would be a great experience and worth it in the end.

Things kept moving forward and thus I found myself with a business visa to the People's Republic of China, a direct flight from San Francisco to Shanghai (12.5 hours there, 11.5 back), and three nights at the beautiful Shanghai Oriental Riverside Hotel.

I was so busy with work and other things that I didn't really have much time to prepare.  Laura helped me get some currency and I received advice on visiting China from about a half dozen coworkers and friends.

The twelve hour flight there was quite comfortable: I had three meals, tons of legroom (in coach even!), a better-than-Virgin in-flight entertainment system, and two empty seats next to me.  Sure, I was tired after arrival, but the flight was quite comfortable.

You can see we flew up to Alaska and then across Tokyo and South Korea.

We had so much food on the plane.  I'm using to domestic flights where you are lucky to get a small snack.

Lunch: pork and rice, snow peas, carrots, broccoli, bread, grapes, melon, and some kind of sliced cabbage or seaweed or something.

Dinner: Turkey and swiss sandwich with lettuce on wheat bread.  I guess this was supposed to be a snack, because right after I'd finished the second half, they came around with breakfast:

Breakfast: two sausage links, omelette, roasted tomato, broccoli, tater tots, croissant, orange juice, cheesecake, cantaloupe, grapes.

I was so full I couldn't finish.  Somehow the old guy next to me ate all of his food though...

Oh, AND we got peanuts plus the standard selection of beverages.

I had been warned so many times to avoid sketchy taxis that I signed up for the official airport taxi to get to my hotel.  Well...  in the end it turned out I "rented a car" and "hired a driver" which cost me about $100 when I could have taken the subway for less than $5.  Oops.  Lesson learned.  Anyway, as they helped me find an official taxi, no less than seven people helped me.  One person even just carried my small bag up a single stairway just to hand it to someone else.  China had an amazing number of workers.  Most of them were just standing around as far as I can tell.  :)

I don't entirely regret taking a car to the hotel.  I got to see what the suburbs of Shanghai look like -- specifically, the Pudong area between the river and the ocean.

Perhaps the craziest thing was the sheer density of residential highrises.

Imagine buildings like this stretching to the horizon.  Each one was rusty and had some really sketchy engineering violations, like allowing rainwater to flow along electrical cables right into the structure, but the sheer number of structures and people was insane.

There was SO MUCH CONSTRUCTION.  I arrived on Sunday evening and even still there were construction workers constantly building.  Also it was crazy how many police officers were just standing around in the road.  I'm not sure what they were even looking for.

After getting stuck in a few Shanghai traffic jams, we made it to my hotel.  Next time I'll share my impressions of downtown Pudong.