Arrived in Shanghai airport without incident. Got off the plan into what seems to be a HUGE airport. The terminal stretches down as far as the eye can see. Getting through health check, immigration and customs was a snap. While waiting for my luggage I found a CitiBank ATM machine, and withdrew 1700 RMB (Yuan). Apparently this is the easiest and cheapest way to get Chinese Currency. It funny, because that's exactly how I got cash in Israel. While waiting inline for customers the two Americans behind me were busy checking their BlackBerries. Amazing. Even if it does take the better part of a day to get from Boston to Shanghai, the ability to have easy communication, and to be instantly connected, means the world feels incredibly small.
Once off the plane I finally felt like we might be in China. All of a sudden I noticed a lot more Chinese. Business Class was almost entirely Americans, and almost (91%) all male. Still, at the airport the announcements were made in Chinese and English, and there were plenty of signs in English. The ATM, as you can imagine, had a button to select the language... Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, English.... Oopps, that was the ones in Israel. Well, there were 4 languages, I can guess one must have been Chinese, and I could read the English. Maybe they also had Japanese and Korean?
The Maglev train is not far from the Airport Terminal. It is just a short walk via an enclosed walkway to train terminal. I am here travelling for the first week with my co-worker Brian Mages. We waited just a few minutes and the train arrived. It was pretty empty. No seatbelts. No helmets. This thing is really going to go 431Kmh (258MPH)? Yep. In a minute or two we accelerated to 431. The countryside was flying by. Whoosh, we passed the train going in the other direction. A few minutes later we arrive in Shanghai. 30Km in 8 minutes. And it felt like 1 minute. It was just so fast. I've never been on a Maglev train before and I was expecting it to be extremely quiet and smooth, and I was a little surprised that it had a few bumps here and there.
From the Maglev to the subway. The subway is just like anyone subway in the world. There were vending machines to buy tickets, but one of them was obviously broken as the currency slots were taped over with a message in Chinese. The other two vending machines had flashing signs saying "No Change". So we bought from the woman at the window who understood our English just fine. 10 RMB ( $1.20 ) for two one way tickets. The train was jam packed. Getting on I got through the doors by only half suitcase did, and already the doors closed on it. I yanked and yanked, and luckily got it into the train. At the next station a woman got stuck with her handbag outside the train and she was in the train. She traveled that way to the next station. I've seen the same thing happen on the Green line in Boston.
We arrived at the hotel at 4:30pm and attempt to checkin, but the rooms are not ready yet. I was a little surprised, but no big deal. We just waited for an hour until they were made up. We didn't have energy to go out and look for a restaurant so we went to "Epicure on 45" the rotating hotel restaurant on the 45th floor and got a great view of Shanghai. I did not snap any photos, but I can report that there is a lot of Neon in Shanghai. So many buildings are lit up, and flashing. Its like a huge Times Square.
This morning I woke a looked out the window. They are already busy working at the construction site across the street. The streets themselves are not so crowded with cars yet (it is Sunday), but there are tons of bikes. Most of them are little scooters. I'm just looking from my window on the 18th floor, but I'll soon go outside a see up close. It is gray and overcast, a high of 50. Not the best sightseeing weather, but I'm going to do my best to do a little sightseeing today before I start with the real work tomorrow.
