Shanghai, China  June 1998

In June of 1998 I tagged along on a trip to Shanghai with Katherine. This was my first trip in Asia to a place that wasn’t a tourist stop. Mind you, it’s not Communist China or Red China anymore. Just PRC or China for short. So, what’s Shanghai like? You wouldn’t believe it.

Our first night there, after some business meetings, Katherine and I were taken to dinner by some of the local IBM people. All were Chinese. Fred and his young wife were from Shanghai. Sean was a Taiwanese with a PhD in computer science from SUNY. Patrick was from Hong Kong. John and another guy were from elsewhere in China. No, I didn’t ask about their names.

The restaurant was called The Gap and the decor reminded us of old New Orleans with brick archways and all. After dinner, they had shows. The first was a Filipino group singing mostly 60's and 70's US tunes. Then came a Las Vegas style review with about a dozen tall, long-legged Chinese girls (no that’s not an oxymoron) doing various dance routines to mostly pop U.S. music.

Food was interesting to say the least. On a lazy Susan, a big one, were a variety of dishes; shrimp, cubed chicken and pork, stir-fried vegetables, fried eel, crispy fried small fish you ate bone and all, fried pork fat, a whole fried fish-head, tail and all-in a kind of sweet sauce, mud snails, all the usual stuff. I skipped the mud snails when they informed me they were an acquired taste. Katherine, much the braver eater, tried them but agreed that I had made the right choice. Actually, the best tasting was the fried eel, really. After only months in Japan, I learned never to ask, “What is this?”; typically, you don’t want to know. You are making a big mistake not to try local dishes because you don’t think that you will like something. Eating local dishes is a major part of the experience of traveling.

The Chinese, of course, use chop sticks, as do the Japanese, so we were used to that. By contrast, in all our travels, we have concluded that the Thai’s have the best technique for eating. Basically they use a fork in the left hand and a spoon in the right. You basically use the fork to push food into the spoon. You can eat anything but steak. However, most of their meat is cut into small pieces.

We arrived in the rain, we left in the rain, and it rained at some time everyday we were there. They told us it was the rainy season. Next time you’re looking for a place to vacation in June, skip Shanghai. Nonetheless, it never really messed up any of our plans. We just used umbrellas a lot.

So what is the city like? It is unbelievably western. Everybody, it seemed, was dressed in basic western clothes including a few men walking around in pajamas. The men's clothing caused Katherine a great deal of anguish because nothing matched; stripes with plaids, etc. Looked fine to me.

Department stores are big time and they are on virtually every corner of the main shopping streets. But everything they sell is western. Katherine wanted to buy a traditional Chinese jacket and the only place she could find one was in the tourist section. On the major shopping street we went down there must have been four or five brides’ photo stores. Doing big business selling pictures of the bride and groom all done up in U.S. style wedding clothes.

Shanghai is touted as the showplace of capitalism outside of Hong Kong and that it is. At the time we were there, nearly 20% of all the world’s rooftop cranes used to build buildings were in Shanghai (U.S.A. Today) and it was easy to believe. Huge new buildings were going up everywhere; 30 and 40 stories tall. People who had been there a year earlier couldn’t believe the changes. Whole blocks just disappear and six months later a department store appears. They claim that a new section of town being rebuilt will be as big as Singapore. Some 10% of the world’s construction was going on in Shanghai. What is noteworthy is that the buildings are mostly very interesting and some quite beautiful. U.S. cities seem drab by comparison.

Language is not a problem unless you leave the hotel. Taxi drivers, for example, by and large speak not a word of English. We had to have the place where we were going written out to show the driver; by written out I mean in Kanji. Actually, in the larger stores you can always find somebody that speaks enough English to make sense of what you want. And, something we never figured out, all of the taxi drivers are encased in a plastic shield. You’d expect this in NY, but not in Shanghai. You hand them money and directions through a little space in the top. Clearly, crime was a problem.

In Shanghai we took a tourist bus to see the city and then got off at the Yu Yuan garden, a must-see place. Off the bus and clearly looking for where to go, an older gentlemen motioned for us to follow him and then pointed out exactly how we should go to get there. We spoke not a word to each other but he knew where we wanted to go. With few exceptions, the people in Asia have all been very friendly.

There is an ongoing joke in Tokyo about how is it possible for someone to ride a bicycle in the rain while holding an umbrella and a briefcase. In Shanghai, bicycles are a major mode of transportation and they effectively have their own lane on the major roads. And in the rain, they put on a kind of parka that covers them and extends over the handle bars. It’s fascinating to see and very colorful, a kind of kaleidoscopic parade in the rain.

In Shanghai, crossing the major streets is a challenge because there are not many signals. You not only have cars and taxis to contend with but scooters and bicycles, and they’re all going at different speeds. The cars and bicycles fight it out much like sail boats and power boats do in the US; each thinks that they have the right-of-way and there is little love lost between the two. Cars are virtually indifferent to pedestrians so you do pay a little more attention. Strangest of all was that they drive on the correct side of the road like in the U.S.

So what things got our attention? There were no small animals anywhere. We hardly even saw any small birds. The only pigeons we saw were being raised by locals on the roofs below the hotel. But we did see pigeon on the menu. By and large, people seemed indifferent to us and yet there were only a few westerners around. We nodded and smiled at people and they all nodded and smiled at us. Did I mention that it rained a lot. And, then, when the sun came out it got hot and humid; not as bad as Singapore but close.

By the way, don’t bother trying the Chinese wine, especially the red wine. Indeed, not many countries in Asia make good wine. In any case, wine doesn’t go well with the hot, spicy food. On the other hand, have I mentioned that just about every country makes a good beer. However, at the first night’s dinner Katherine and I drank the local Tsing Tao beer while everyone else drank either Budweiser or Heineken. We went to the state run store called the Friendship store; catchy name. Beautiful silks, art works and furniture. Unbelievably high prices and they do not negotiate. Actually, negotiation was not common. They clearly have not fully grasped the fine points of capitalism yet.