China! Day 1

Day 1

I arrived in an empty Shanghai airport at about 4pm on April 1. I had a little trouble locating an ATM, then I discovered that I should have been looking for a "cash converter machine." With a pocket full of yuan (Chinese currency) and my hotel name printed in Chinese, I hopped in a cab for the 1-hour drive into the city. We passed through lots of congested (and seemingly poor) old towns. There are huge rundown apartment buildings. Clothes are hung out to dry on poles sticking out of windows on the 30th floor of buildings covered in bamboo scaffolding. There are lots of bikes and motor scooters weaving in and out of traffic. Two separate times, I witness men peeing along the side of the road.

Shanghai and it's a different story. The city has some older more tradional sections, but, for the most part, it is very modern and cosmopolitan. It's the financial capital of China, maybe all of Asia. There are odd-shaped skyscrapers for as far as the eye can see, most of which sprang up in the last 20 years. You'd be forgiven for thinking you were looking at the Manhattan skyline.

I met my cousin Jim at the hotel and we hit the town. After a stroll along the Bund (boardwalk-type area along the Huangpu River), we decide to go to Xintiandi, which has a lot of the city's nightlife. We show the cab driver a card with Xintiandi written in Chinese and we repeat back and forth to each other "Xintiandi" (or at least that's what I thought we did). The driver drops us off in front of a huge 12-story department store close to our hotel. We go in and wander through the different levels, searching for the elusive Xintiandi. But we only see more department stores. "Maybe this is it," I say. Jim looks at me incredulously: "You think this is a bar?"

We got in another cab, which delivered us to the real Xintiandi. This is a relatively new area with posh bars and restaurants filled mostly with expats. It wasn't exactly what we were expecting, but after all that effort to find it, we certainly had to stay and test it out!