Bigger and Faster in China

So, today is a big day here in China, and especially in Shanghai.

First of all, today is the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of China, which held ts first congress here in Shanghai. Ever since we got here, this event was being promoted on TV and in newspapers all over town. Many of the people I work with are participating in "Red Song" events, commemorating the anniversary.

In conjunction with the 90th anniversary of the Party, China also opened its latest and greatest civil engineering projects for business. The first is the longest cross-sea bridge in the world, the Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, an 8-lane bridge spanning over 41 km connecting two business districts of Qingdao. The second, and more publicized, project is the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed rail, which offers airplane-like speed coupled with more comfort at comparable prices. Previously, a the fastest train ride between Beijing and Shanghai would take over 9 hours, but the new trains can cover the 1,318 km in under 5 hours, depending on the class of ticket you buy, with the training reaching top speeds of over 350 km/hr!

If there's one thing that really stands out about China - they like to do things big and fast! Unfortunately, the same can't be said for in-city traffic!

2011 Shanghai Adventure - Part Two

First, a cute video to whet your appetites (Facebook readers, please go to the original post to see the video!)



So, we've been in China for about two weeks now. My TPM has gone back stateside, so my workdays are largely relegated to doing documentation and research from our onsite hotel/office. It's less stressful, but it can definitely get a little lonely sitting in that office all by my onesome! However, I did get a chance to visit my company's official office in Shanghai and met some of our local personnel, who are available to help me out if I need anything:

Cute receptionist Tiffany manning her station at the Shanghai office

As I mentioned in my last post, Shanghai's weather has gotten substantially better. At least from the standpoint of being able to see the sky and things like that. I've been thus able to get a lot better shots of the scenery from my window:

Our hotel, in real, live sunlight! Or something close to it...



Night lights



More lights!

Mediocre attempt at long-exposure highway shot

Blue skies???!?!?!!?! in Shanghai?!?!?!

Okay, bluish grey anyway...

With a proper zoom lens, I could properly show you the taiji practitioners at Zhongshan Park in the morning...

You can see the iconic Bund skyscrapers from my hotel lounge! From left to right, the Oriental Pearl, the Grand Hyatt, and the International Trade Center

Just another cityscape shot...

We started to do a little apartment/house hunting this past week as well. There are some very nicely equipped "serviced apartments" in Shanghai. These are basically fully furnished apartments that  come with housekeeping and bedding and linen changing services, similar to a hotel. They're quite popular with expatriates because of this convenience, and I have to add that, with the sheer amount of dust that accumulates within minutes in Shanghai, it certainly helps to have some housekeeping services!

But the highlight of this past week was a visit to Wuxi, where Cherry is from. Actually, she's actually from Mashan, which is a small, somewhat rural suburb of Wuxi roughly an hour's drive from the center of the city. To get there, we took the new high speed rail early in the morning.

High speed rail station

Fifi fell off the bed the previous day, leaving a little red mustache!

The first-class coach

The high speed train

Moving along at high speeds

And high speed it was! I was thoroughly impressed when I saw that we had reached speeds of 188 km/hr, but towards the end of the trip, the speedometer got much, much higher:

Roughly 200 miles per hour!

After about an hour on the train, we arrived in Wuxi, where my wife's sister-in-law picked us up. After another hour on the road, we arrived at Cherry's house, where we were promptly greeted by Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandma and Aunt

Reunited with Grandma

Aunt

Grandpa

We took Fifi out for a stroll around Mommy's hometown:

Outside a local restaurant

A lady in the street admires Fifi and her wheels

The street

Grandma caught up with us on a tricycle

Chickens in the street

Grandma in front of the path she forged to her illegitimate vegetable garden

Fishing in the canal

Willow!

Before long, Uncle and Cousin Wenping came home to meet Fifi too!

Fifi bonded right away with her newly met relatives

Wataaah! Chop Choy!

Big Smiles

Fifi was also expectedly a hit with the elderly folk in the neighborhood:

To commemorate Fifi's first trip back to her mother's hometown, we went to get some family photos taken:

The photographer's mediocre skills couldn't keep up with my awesome camera

After taking pictures, sister-in-law took us to her clothing shop to let me pick out some nice clothes. Of course, Fifi was a main attraction there as well:

On the way to the shop

Some tiny domestic dogs that terrified Cousin Wenping

Dolphin statue

Sister-in-law's storefront

Sister-in-law's sister-in-law

I'm actually not sure who this is... but Fifi doesn't seem to care

After picking out some slick threaded back to have dinner with some of Fifi's great-grand-relatives - Cherry's dad's uncle and aunt!

Fifi's great-grand uncle and great-grand aunt!

After dinner, we headed back to Shanghai, getting ready for our third week in China!

2011 Shanghai Adventure - Part One

So, my first week in Shanghai has come to a close. I'm not going to lie - it's been a pretty stressful week with quite a few ups and downs - including a pretty big argument about halfway through the week that I wanted to note for posterity, but don't really want to go into detail about. So, without any further ado, on to the travelogue!

So Ed came over on our last day before the trip because he needed a little company after some personal issues. This allowed him to see us off at the airport!

Uncle Ed sent us off at the airport

Shortly thereafter, we hopped on the plane to Detroit!

I'm on a plane!

In Detroit, we met up with my Technical Program Manager, Jay:

Who needs teething rings when you have carrots!

Some 20 hours after leaving Florida, we finally arrived in Shanghai! Near our hotel is this Best Buy! Unfortunately, we won't be buying anything from this Best Buy, because the chain has since closed through all of China. Apparently, Best Buy's business model of trading off low prices for better customer service doesn't fly well in China...

Defunct Best Buy

Before long, we entered our hotel, the Zhongshan Park Renaissance!

External shot of the hotel

Main Lobby

Sittin' on the bed

Snazzy bathtub

The living room!

The reason we opted for this hotel was because it was comparably priced to the hotel my company usually stays at when we come to Shanghai, but with the added benefit of having a separate work/living area from the bedroom.

Some other perks of my room in the hotel are unlimited access to the lounge on the 58th floor, which provides virtually an unlimited supply of alcohol and soft drinks from 6AM to 11PM, plus has a full buffet breakfast in the morning, some finger foods during supper hours, and some late night snacks and desserts!

A nice stairwell in the lounge

Flowers and fruit

Crawling along the windowsill

The view from the Lounge

Artsy decoration in the lounge

Grabbing Breakfast

And eating it!

Food spread!

The lounge isn't the only place we can get good views, however. From our 47th floor suite, the views aren't half bad either!

Nighttime cityscape

Hanging out by the window

Pressed up against the glass

The view from our bathroom!

Visibility has been a bit hit-and-miss, with mostly misses as it rained most of the week. But today, the visibility is first class! I'll have to add some photos next time!

The other perk we've used in the hotel is the first-class gym!

Yes, that is a boxing ring

All sorts of equipment!

Treadmills overlooking the city

Another huge plus of our hotel is that it's actually co-located with one of the premier shopping malls in Shanghai, so we have easy access to a Carrefour supermarket, a Toys 'R Us, a whole bunch of high end apparel and accessory shops, and of course, lots of food!

So that's about what we've explored of the hotel so far. But of course, the primary purpose of this trip is for work. And work has been an adventure in its own right. With Jay in town, the customer wanted us to participate in meetings all week discussing contractual issues. These meetings are often 3-4 hours long with a lot of locking horns, so it's a bit stressful and a pretty new experience for me.

We usually meet with the customer in this building - the Astronautics Hotel

This is the onsite office provided by our customer. It's actually a converted hotel room.

Getting to work has been fun for me. For the first few days, we relied exclusively on the taxis, which are relatively cheap - it's about 30 RMB per trip, which is about $4 USD. However, in the middle of the week, I got adventurous and decided to use the metro! The metro is actually usually a bit quicker, but of course you have to walk a bit to get to the station. However, it's hard to beat the price - just 3 RMB (roughly 50 cents) per trip!

The metro is fast and cheap! But a little crowded...

Part of our adventure is also finding out ways to reduce costs. China, and Shanghai in particular, has become surprisingly expensive. Our first area of cost reduction was switching from eating room service and instead using the plethora of dining options in the shopping mall below. Another big discovery was the Laundry Express service. The hotel has a laundry service, but it charges an arm and a leg for each piece of laundry (around 50RMB per article! Including tiny baby clothes!). Laundry Express is still expensive, but it charges by the load, which makes a huge difference.

That's all for this edition of 2011 Shanghai Adventure! Tune in next time for more!

It was a bit windy on this day...