: Rina, Snow_love, Destiny, Katy

[Note] This was written on 11/12. In transit, it was difficult to post. I will continue the posts each day for the week that I was overseas! [/note]

Ni Hao! I am in Shanghai at the moment, winding down from my first day working here. It's already been a long week. After about 15.5 hours on planes, I arrived at 3PM Sunday Shanghai-time. My company contact picked me up with a driver and after another 45min in CRAZY traffic, I checked into my hotel and started a little sight-seeing. If you've ever been to Chicago and thought traffic was insane there, wait til you experience Shanghai . They warned me that if I had to get into a cab, look for the star rating. I had a driver who drove crazily through the city. I thought that was bad until I got into a cab with ZERO stars. There is no such thing as right-of-way here. It's more like "if your truck, car, bike, moped, or body fits here, you can go there without any regard to what is around you" . The people of the city walk around in the middle of the road and the cars play chicken with huge busses and mopeds. It is nuts!

...but it is quite the experience as well! I went shopping in the subway on my first night and bargained for a knock-off Coach for $10. I have my real ones, but comon... $10 ! I only had enough cash for that so I haven't bought much else yet. I had a huge 5+ course dinner of amazing Chinese food. Shrimp, chicken, duck, century egg, tofu... O M G! I am going to weigh twice as much by the time I leave this week. I don't know how they stay skinny over here.

I had my first meeting today. At lunch, the other company took me out to lunch for another 12+ course lunch: crab, chicken, fish, veggies, soup, etc etc . This reminds me of the Chinese/Vietnamese weddings I used to go to while I was younger... but that was a WEDDING, not a business lunch! I was nearly comatose for the second half of the day. Jet lag didn't help either. It's difficult adjust to an 11-hour time change.

After work, my coworker took me to see the tourist area, The Bund, where Shanghai is split by a river (Huangpu River) into two subcities: Pudong (East Shanghai) and Puxi (West Shanghai). At the Bund, you can clearly see Puxi as Old Shanghai with it's old architecture across the way from Pudong as New & more Modern Shanghai. I have always appreciated the marriage of two complimentary elements and today, I witnessed the marriage of old and traditional with new and modern. It was like a time black-hole--you see the city as it was over a couple hundred years ago and you see the same city as a modern growing plethora of glassed high-rises (with much more liberal architectural design) that would give New York City and Chicago a run for its money. PICS!


I toured more of the city and ate a huge Taiwanese dinner at Din Tag Fung at Xintiandi--a development within Puxi where old style shops sit in the middle of the high rises. It's another marriage of old tradition with modern redevelopments--"Yesterday meets tomorrow in Shanghai today" is the goal. Beautiful!

Anyway, I have to prepare for flying out of Shanghai tomorrow. I will be in Qingtao on Tuesday and Wednesday for meetings then I'll be flying back to Shanghai on Wednesday Night.

Categorized: Trips, Work
Plugs: Laura | Crystal | Mimi | Rina | J | Kaz | Brandy | Soomin | Esme | Connie | SNOW_LOVE | Josh | Jazzie V | Kirsty | Mishie | Arlene | Risa | Destiny | Isabelle | Kelly | Catherine | Ayame | Jijy | Kay | Katy