shanghai dang

finally we dart directly across into china, after carefully skirting the coast on our flights to and from taipei. descending into shanghai you see swarms of black empty container ships, floating along like so many slow moving tadpoles.

i have to admit that i had a brief flash of paranoia that they were going to nab me at immigration, scanning my passport and then suddenly asking, “aren’t you the son of that taiwanese independence author and columnist?” and then me having to make a mad dash back to the plane, screaming “TAIWAN IS NOT PART OF CHINA!” eventually being dragged down by legions of immigration officials, and then spending the rest of my days in some little cell making cheap mobile phone car chargers. this did not actually happen, unsurprisingly. however, they do have a whole separate immigration line and booth for questioning of taiwanese nationals.

promptly met by the local sales team, they packed us into a minivan and whisked us out to hangzou, where alibaba is located. (alibaba is a hugely successful chinese b2b in which yahoo! china has a minority stake.) we were on a pretty tight schedule, as we had just enough time to make the two hour drive and then grab some food before rushing in. they picked KFC, perhaps because they thought it would be more palatable to us fat americans? anyhow, why not? let’s just get the whole bird flu thing over with right away! the odd thing about this was that on this trip i’ve been reading murakami’s kafka on the shore, and had just gotten to the part where colonel sanders shows up as a pimp. weird. this also did not actually happen (to me). as for the meeting itself, i suppose it went all right, but it’s a little hard to tell. unlike the korea and japan teams, there were a lot of people there and it’s not clear how much they actually understood. thank goodness the local engineer was there to help translate and clarify.

after that, a nice dinner on the shore of west lake, a big vacation/tourist spot in hangzou. especially tasty were the octopus jerky. not so crazy about the mango with mayonnaise, though. then the long drive back, which i mostly slept through. i’m not sure why we didn’t just fly into hangzou from hong kong, as this would have saved four hours of my life. on the other hand, we got to experience shanghai, which is maybe the fourth largest city in the world? it’s fricking huge. unlike seoul which seemed more spread out, it’s very dense and high and just looks huge. or maybe it was the fact that we got put up in the jw marriot tomorrow square, which has it’s lobby on the 38th floor and actual rooms far above. yes, your ears pop just going to check into the hotel.

the one small perk to this trip is that we keep having our rooms upgraded because we’re staying in these places for the first time. from the suite in seoul to being on the club level in taipei to a corner room on the 58th floor in shanghai, it keeps getting fancier and better. maybe if i got to stay for more than eight hours at a time i could actually appreciate it.

despite not getting to the hotel until 10pm, i decided to venture out and walk around shanghai a little, even though we need to leave at six tomorrow morning in order to make our tokyo flight. i eventually find this large outdoor pedestrian mall a few blocks from the hotel right in downtown shanghai, where people are walking around even though everything’s pretty much shut down since it’s after midnight. i was a little pleased at the fact that i could walk around relatively unmolested, and not stick out like a foreigner. until i kept getting hit up by people every few feet to see if i wanted a hooker. it was funny a couple of times, but then just turned annoying after the next dozen people harassing me. so much for being unmolested. ah well, perhaps i should have worn the wife-beater and flip-flops. or maybe i do look too american, no matter what.

at least i wasn’t approached by colonel sanders. although if i was, who knows what would have happened?

Posted at July 29, 2006 12:50 AM