First, The one thing that sums things up for me is this: imagine a country peopled entirely by only children, now multiple by 1 billion. This is my big observation. The impact that this small, often overlooked effect has on China is incredible to see.
So as many of you know I just returned from 2 weeks in Shanghai, China. Despite being married for more than 9 years, I had never been to the country my wife grew up in. Sharine moved to the US when she was 17, and her immediate family is all in the US, while my immediate family is in New Zealand. Whenever we went somewhere we went to NZ, grandkids visiting grandparents, engagement, etc… all to New Zealand. This was my first trip to China, but not my first trip to Asia. As many of you also know I had spent a short business trip visiting Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and Tokyo. They were much more like I expected. Malaysia was a fantastic polyglot of cultures and people. Jakarta was an oft savage, close to third world experience. Tokyo was a refined, polite, deferential fashion leader that defined what the east is in the eyes of the west. Shanghai, is as once all of those things and none of them.
We did not go to China as American tourists. We went as “local tourists”. My wife had several friends and family members in Shanghai who offer to let us stay. Veronica and her family magnanimously offered to live at their parents house while we stayed out in their place on Xei Tu Road, in South Shanghai (no, not at all like South Los Angeles). We arrived tired but excited from a United flight that connected through Chicago mid-afternoon. The smog was palpable. I assumed the visibility was limited to about 1/2 a mile due to the industrial areas out by the airport, oh how wrong I was. As we drove into the city across 15 story fly-away road bridges and massive centrally suspended bridges it dawned on me that this kind of air was normal, and my first observation was the cab in front of us had a HOOTERS ad in the window, not that I notice these things. It was hot, high 90’s, sticky, and smoky. As I glanced out the window I spotted a 300 mph maglev speeding past us to the city. Hunter was so excited he squealed!
When we arrived we discovered that Veronica’s place was a 6th floor walkup, accessed through a rough hewn concrete staircase, with a security gate that rivaled a Federal penitentiary (yes I’ve been in one, during my work with DHS). My mind was reeling as we lugged out overstuffed suitcases up the 12 flights of 8 stairs. Each stair was stamped with multiple blocks of characters and numbers: advertisements for the contractors who fixed things in the building. When we finally climbed the stairs to the 6th floor we were greeted with another gate, of the same quality and strength as the one below, then a beautiful wooden door, with a 3 bolt deadlock. My initial reaction was, as you can imagine: concern. Why did they need this kind of security? What kind of neighborhood where we in? How would I cope with little to no Mandarin. I was truly giving up any semblance of control.
Veronica was fantastic, showed us all around, opened her home to us, stayed to help us make wontons and cook them up for a feast the first night (one feast of many!). Her house was not really a home as I would have defined it. They lived in this apartment during the week, basically just eating, sleeping, and doing homework. During the weekends they go to live with their parents, in a much nicer, homelier apartment a bit further out of the city. According to my Lonely Planet guide, the road we were on wasn’t even on the Shanghai map! I was worried this little place was waaaaay out in the city burbs. I didn’t realize how small Shanghai is (despite being home to 17 million people).
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Filed under: NZ vs USA, happenings, on the go , china, kuala lumpur, New Zealand, shanghai, tokyo, trips, United States, wonton, wontons, xie tu lu
So at risk of sounding like the latest Apple fanboy (aren’t there enough of those already?) I wanted to talk about my transition to Mac and how that has been for me. The biggest thing for me (beyond learning some new hot keys and slightly different interfaces) has been the small touches in the hardware design and how it works with the OS and software. Here’s my hot list:
