Shanghai Trip June 2013
This time around in Shanghai started with the biggest queue at the immigration that I have seen so far in Pudong airport and that on a Sunday afternoon. It took some 40 minutes to advance to the immigration officer 
I made my way to the normal taxi booth and almost staggered backwards. There was an over hundred meter long queue at the taxi stand!
Right after coming out of the building and heading for the end of the line a guy approached me and offered in good English: “Taxi with no waiting”? I asked him how much and his answer was 400 RMB which is a ridiculous price. I happen to know that it costs about 180 RMB from Pudong airport to my hotel because I stayed there before.
I advanced to the end of the line and there were two foreigners in front of me and we got hassled by several taxi offerers and the prices went down over 350 to final offer 250 but none of the foreigners reacted and I also declined. These guys run unregistered taxis and are not very trustworthy. One of them said: “Two hour wait”! But I did not really believe that because there were taxis driving up next to us constantly and the line was progressing quickly.
Policemen came by and shouted at the guys in Chinese and they finally left me alone and tried with the next foreigner, with the police sometimes telling them to piss off but they of course stayed and kept on looking for customers.
The two hours was a complete lie, despite the impressive length of the queue, I was up front in half an hour. Faster than with the immigration.
As an upgrade to my previous taxi ride to the hotel this one had seat belts in the back, yeah!
I gave the driver, who of course didn’t speak a word of English, my map to the hotel including its address in Chinese characters. Again that proved to be an absolute necessity if you want to take the usual taxi service and don’t want to pay for limousines.
The taxi driver pretended not to know where the hotel was and called someone on the phone. I have a fairly good sense of direction and I have been to that hotel now a couple of times and noticed the guy made a detour, he drove too far and then toured back. He timed it so precisely that the meter read exactly 200 RMB upon arrival. That’s what he got then from me and no tip. First of all I didn’t have smaller bills yet and second, no tip for a detour (despite him complaining about that).
Traffic went astonishingly smoothly and without any major fearful maneuvers.
The weather… Hazy hazy, hot and hazy. And a lot of that haze looked like smog… More on that topic in the next paragraph.
I rewarded myself for the survival of yet another taxi ride with an excellent dinner buffet at the hotel 
During the conference at our office in China, we of course talked (extensively) about the smog. My German colleagues (not so much my Chinese colleagues) all have “pollution apps” on their iPhones. In Japan we all have (the Japanese included) “earthquake apps”, in China it’s pollution apps.
One colleague showed me the announcements of the Chinese authorities in one app and the different announcements of the US embassy app. Apart from the values of the US app being usually higher, the definitions of both sides of what is unhealthy and what is safe are different.
While the Chinese authorities still say it is “safe”, the American app was using the PSI and that one defines anything over 100 PSI as unhealthy. The PSI is at the moment big in the news due to the pollution in Singapore, but for the people in China this has become daily business!
Here is a PSI definition from Wikipedia.
We had the highest amount, about 190, on the 19th of June and wherever you looked there was hazy filth in the 35 degrees humid heat. It looked like this from the hotel window:
Anything above 200 is “very unhealthy” and over 300 means “hazardous”. I did not feel any immediate effect from the close to 200 values (I guess because I spent most of the days indoors), but it is spooky to look into that haze. Such are the hazards around the world. I’m not sure what is better or worse to live with, earthquake threat or heavily polluted air… since I am “used” to earthquakes, I am tending to chose those over pollution.
On one of the days we had no joint evening event and I went to the hotel alone by taxi. The taxi driver took a weird route to the hotel, which turned out to be an attempt to avoid the ever present traffic jams and he drove through back alleys. And what back alleys they were. They looked like full blown slums to me. Completely decrepit and ramshackle houses (I didn’t dare to make a photo). Dirt everywhere, some houses only rubble and piles of debris in them. Looks like no rubbish collection happens in these areas. Next door to the rubble a shack stood where someone sold old – non-flat TVs. Food stalls are crammed in between the rubble and jobless (?) people in threadbare clothes sit in the streets and watch the cars driving by. Then, across one single street a “development” area starts and the slums are gone. Suddenly construction sites and already finished high rises in parks stand around you: Quite some contrast.
My hotel and the new posh shopping mall next door were a mere 500 meters away from those slums but the slum people did not come into this area. I suppose the multitude of guards would hush them away if they dared.
The divide between rich and poor is very distinct and deep. On the flight to Shanghai a Chinese couple sat next to me – the newly rich who have been presumably going shopping in Tokyo, both of them had iPads and iPhones and jewelry on them. Also the clientele of the hotel’s dinner buffet of course fits into that category. They are many many miles away from the slums not half a mile away…
I had some time that evening and checked out the new shopping mall next to the hotel, international brands but the shops were rather empty. Maybe due to it being a weekday or the location of the mall in a yet not “fully developed” area.
I wonder where the slum people will go once they are being chased away from their current residence. I went into the giant Tesco market at the bottom of the mall which was the first shop to exist in that complex and i had been there once before when the rest of the mall was still under construction. The variety in that shop is amazing, also the quality looks excellent and the prices are rather steep for Chinese standards I suppose. I still cannot quite come over the open meat in that shop though. It lies packed in ice openly there and indeed two customers stood around it and touched the raw meet with their bare hands, poking. Now that does not seem very hygienic or appetizing to me.
I bought a variety of sweets there from the Japanese producer “Glico” as a souvenir for my office colleagues at home. Glico’s “Pretz” sticks brand is popular in Japan too but they sell flavors in this Tesco the likes of which I have not seen in Japan. Funny that they produce other flavors in China and I’m thrilled to see how my Japanese colleagues will react to the stuff
I had three dinners with my colleagues, in a Chinese, Mexican and Thai restaurants. The Thai restaurant was in yet another giant luxury shopping mall. A Japanese one -Takashimaya – which I of course know from Tokyo. Except for the food court the department store was yawningly empty. I really wonder how these shops survive and how the many a clerks’ salary is paid.
The weather got a little better in the latter half of the week. Less hot, only 29 or so degrees instead of 35 and more. On the way back to the airport on Friday afternoon I tried to get a peak at downtown and it’s high rises, but unfortunately they were shrouded in smog. This was my 5th time in Shanghai within some 20 months and this time the smog was definitely worst. It was as bad or even worse as in Wuxi in November last year. I can very well understand that also the Chinese are getting worried and angry at the air pollution. Shanghai is still rather well off, I suppose. Beijing, lying in aside valley is much worse and other, not so famous places surely as well. China faces a big task and challenge concerning the environment.
This won’t have been my last time in Shanghai and I am thrilled to see how the smog situation etc. will look like presumably next year around the same time in June again. For now I am happy to return to the in comparison super fresh air of Tokyo.
