China Diary

In the middle of the work mess that I am coping with, I forget to note in this blog that I went to China. Ah china. I was always fascinated with China. Especially in the last decade or so. I wanted to see China once. The economic miracle that is China. Where there is money and opportunity, the country that will rule the world, the country that exports tons of stuff and the country that India should look forward to emulate. I have been only to Hong Kong (and schenzen) if you call that China. But never to the proper mainland. China is not a place that I think I might go with family. I don’t think it’s a backpacker’s delight. It has interest from me merely as a professional and not as a tourist. I would like to visit China on work not on tourism.

Every year one firm likes to call us for a jaunt. It kept selecting Bangkok as a location. The first time I sent someone from my team; the second time they wanted me but I politely told them – of all places, I am not coming to that place. I don’t intent to have Bangkok fun and I definitely don’t want to go there and get everybody to sneer at me. I have been there once before and that’s no place for me to go. So this time they came into tell me that they have noted my suggestion and this time they have selected Shanghai as the place. Shanghai…. Hmmm.. not bad. Shanghai to China is what Mumbai is to India.  An erstwhile trading port becoming the center of finance of a country. Mumbai should emulate Shanghai is what everybody says. So I accepted the invitation.

So what’s my impression? Not that I have too many impressions. Of the three and a half days, one day was spent in the plane, one and a half in a conference room and one for sightseeing and two hours of shopping. Bah!

I have  few impressions – ofcourse no one of them speak English. For a modern city of the future, not speaking English is a big no no. I think the Chinese need to correct that. That is stopping them from taking over the world completely right now. But the other view is that – the world will learn Chinese.

The other – no Facebook. Hahaha. Yes to instagram and no to facebook. But you knew that – didn’t you.

Big city – yes. Really huge, built for scale. Tons of flyovers, freeways and these are built one on top of the other. They are five highways on top of each other. At some point you look outside the window to get – a tenth floor of a building. Wow. Scale. The Chinese know what scale is. Everywhere there are flyovers trying to move the traffic. The result – traffic jams. Yup. Not as bad as let’s say Bangkok, but yes there are jams. Contrast this with the London model, where I hardly saw any flyover megaliths. The British are very clear – you want to move – here is the public transport. What’s your excuse to take the car. Mumbai following Shanghai is stupid. The model is London. Get enough of public transport and you can move cities with less pollution and greater efficiency. You can’t build enough flyovers and have enough parking. There is no such thing.

The other bit – They managed to teach the Chinese to be clean. The city is largely very clean (not Singapore) but clean enough. I think it was as clean as London or possibly cleaner. But the Chinese can shit without a smoke. Yup. They smoke like crazy. My hotel room smelt like a smoking corner everytime I entered it. And so the public loos. At the five star hotel – I entered the loo only to run out. I spoke to the manager and he apologized. He says – he spends the whole day trying to get the Chinese to smoke outside the hotel. But he can do jack about the loos. They smoke in loos all the time. In fact there is nothing anyone in China can do about it. I told him to simply install smoke detectors; and he replied that installing them would mean stopping all banqueting business. Oh dear. Every loo I visited in China was reasonably clean but the men in the loos would simply light up and have a go. You can’t just shit in the public pots in China. And with people with severe distaste for smoking like me – nothing I could do. Malls, hotels, public loos, restaurant loos, temple loos… everywhere. They simply light up and to go.

Shanghai, China – yes it a mega city. They definitely build to ego and size. Completely phallic. But I am not to judge. I did not get any more insights on poverty (not seen), hunger (ditto); some insights on religion (largely atheist), and just simply strengthened my belief in mass rapid transit. It’s a cold country for outsiders. I did not really like it. And yes – like all places – there is one shop that the guide insists you got to to shop for pearls. They have a stopover there for sure. Crap tourist commission place that mixes some education on pearls before selling you the same. Screw you. I used the time to go out and roam around. It was cold and the drink I had was some variation of a hot lemon juice. That was pretty cool.

That’s my simple China blog. Not much but enough to be sure not to include it in my places to go with Family. But yes, at least it’s off my list. This was the easiest way to get it off. I am happy.

Ah – one more thing I checked off – in the evening, opposite the place we had dinner some of the guys noticed an exotic toy shop. Hahaha. That was one hell of a shop. But they sold it with all seriousness. Some of the exhibits were displayed like a museum. Very clean and nothing sleazy about it. that was impressive. Sales girls in formal attire selling and explaining some of the stuff, very seriously. there – one more retail format visited. Now to see Walmart and Ikea.