Better City, Better Life

And now for the continuing stoooory of a doctor who’s gone to the dogs – oops, sorry, wrong story. (And a very obscure pop culture reference.) Our hero was last seen slaving over a hot computer in a Shanghai hotel room, wondering if he would be able to wake up in time to get to the airport, and looking forward to riding the maglev train again.

I had heard horror stories about Shanghai rush hour traffic, so I got up well before six and was checking out of the hotel a bit after seven. There was a taxi driver hanging around, and he asked if I was going to Pudong Airport. I pulled out my little maglev ticket with the picture of the train and pointed to it. He made a “Pfft!” sort of noise, obviously believing I should stick with the tried and true taxi to the airport. I stuck to my story and said I wanted to go to the train station. Then he pulled out his trump card. The train doesn’t start running until 9:00. I found this hard to believe, but in the absence of hard evidence one way or the other, I felt stuck. I asked how much he would charge to get there. He said ¥150, which was more than the train would have cost, but not outrageous. I was a little suspicious that he could be lying to me about the train just to get a lucrative fare, but I got in. Traffic wasn’t really that bad, and he took kind of a roundabout way (probably to avoid bottlenecks). I have to admit that we paralleled the maglev track for quite a way and I never saw a single train go by. I had read that Shanghai’s maglev, while an engineering marvel and thoroughly cool, is regarded in many circles as an expensive bid for prestige, and ridership has never been very good. If the blasted thing doesn’t run until nine in the morning, I’d say that takes a serious bite out of its practicality. According to Wikipedia, it starts at 7:00 and runs till 9:00pm but I know that is inaccurate, since it ran until 10:00pm when I arrived. Maybe I did get taken for a ride.
Did I mention that Pudong Airport is really big? I got there way too early, so I killed some time in the coffee shop and did some reading.
Once again I found myself in a shuttle bus going across the tarmac to board a plane. My ticket said Air China, but this was the plane. Dragon Air is based out of Hong Kong, and code shares with Air China on certain routes.

After landing at Narita, I managed to successfully use a cash machine. I bought a train ticket to Sakuragi-cho Station in Yokohama, which involved one transfer at Yokohama Station. I picked up some snacks from the kiosk and waited about an hour for my train. It was no bullet train, but it was nice and comfortable. It was very full, and I didn’t have a window seat, so you don’t get any more shaky pictures of the Japanese countryside. I got to my hotel pretty easily. It’s got a pedestrian bridge over the street that practically joins it to the train station.
The room at the Yokohama Washington Hotel is very small, but clean (aside from a slight cigarette odor) and has all the modern conveniences.
If you take the main room and the bathroom together it’s about the size of the spare bedroom in my apartment.
I changed clothes and walked over to the convention center where the World Science Fiction Convention is taking place, not sure what I’d find there. They were still open for registration, so I picked up my packet.
It included a lovely big Souvenir Book which reads from both covers. You turn it one way and read the English, and reading from the “back” you get the Japanese, since Japanese books are read in the opposite direction. The English side cover features a beautiful painting by Michael Whelan, who is one of the Guests of Honor. SF conventions typically have three GOH’s: a writer, an artist, and a prominent fan, but given the bilingual nature of this con, both Japanese and English were represented in the author and artist categories.
The Japanese side has cover art by Yoshitaka Amano, a well-known Japanese artist, who has done everything from manga to book covers to games.
The center has a full-color gallery of works by the two.

I went downstairs to the large theater just in time to catch the opening ceremony. I didn’t have my camera with me, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was kind of fun. I saw Robert Silverberg down front before the lights dimmed, so I knew he’d made it, but didn’t manage to get anywhere near him.

The MC was a Japanese voice actress who spoke pretty good English. There was also a translator at the side of the stage to handle the guests’ speeches. One of the first guests was the mayor of Yokohama, who arrived on stage riding a rickshaw. Apparently he’s known for his environment-friendly policies, and he joked about proposing rickshaws to replace cars.

There was a very amusing opening animation piece that took scenes and characters from dozens of famous Japanese movies from Godzilla to anime and mixed them up, with all the monsters, aliens and robots converging on Yokohama. the Guest of Honor speeches started with American author David Brin. He’s one of my favorites (I just finished his second Uplift trilogy a couple months ago), and started his speech with a little bit in phonetic Japanese about being a “crazy foreigner” that got some laughs. He told about how he had just been in Chengdu China for a science fiction convention the previous weekend, and how he sees Asia growing in the SF world just as it is in the real one. The con in Chengdu would have been extremely cool to visit, but timing did not allow.

Japanese author Sakyo Komatsu was up next. He’s a grand master of Japanese SF, and has been writing since the 60s and has been involved in a number of movies. He’s in his 70s, and was wheeled in by an assistant. He gave a fairly long speech that must have been pretty amusing from all the laughs it got from the Japanese in the audience. The translation must not have done it justice.

Whelan and Amano both had speeches, and they were followed by an emotional reminiscence by fan guest Takumi Shibano, who has been at the center of the Japanese SF community since the late 50s. He had the convention chairman in tears, and was pretty choked up himself.

As I walked back to the hotel afterwards, I kept my eyes open for dinner prospects, and happened to walk right by the Hard Rock Café. That works – burger and beer. By this time I probably should have known better than to check my email (Blueberry and mobile phone are both incompatible with the Japanese network). Once again I ended up connecting to Beijing and working late.

Which makes for a good place to take a pause.

Will our hero ever get a break? Will he survive in the Land of SF? Only time (and the next episode) will tell.

Shoeshine, mister?

In our last episode, the city of Shanghai (or its pigeons at least) was being terrorized by a diminutive monster in a brown dress. Will the birds survive? Who will come to their rescue? Moving right along, there is the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
Which is just down the street from the Marriott Centre.
Which is one of the coolest buildings I’ve ever seen.
Please excuse my obsession. It just looks cool from almost every angle.
Like other parks here, this one has its rules posted at the entrances, though I didn’t notice until I’d stepped out and came back in a different way.
There’s a lovely pond, and down at one end they’ve got masses of lotus (or should it be loti?).
Along a little path from the lotus pond is the Museum of Contemporary Art. You figure this one out.
An old man was walking by when I took this picture, and he looked curious at the way I was holding the camera so close to the flowers. I put the camera in review mode and showed him the screen. He nodded (in appreciation I hope) and smiled.
I’ve seen motorcycles lined up outside bars, but this is a new one. Three-wheeled motorized vehicles are fairly common in China, and I’m not even sure what the best English word for them would be. What do you suppose they are gathered for?
I’d say these guys get together pretty often.

Just after I took that picture, a Chinese man approached me and started speaking to me in English. I’ve gotten pretty cynical about this kind of thing – usually they end up asking you to go to an art show or buy a watch or see the girls available for massages. (I did get a new one in People’s Square, though. A guy walked by quickly, saying, “Hashish? Hashish?”) It ended up being a very odd conversation. He started by saying he thought I must have a good eye for taking pictures. I was thinking he was going to tell me I was being rude by taking a picture of the card players, but he really seemed to be complimenting me on my choice of subjects. I said I liked to catch scenes of everyday life, so people in America could see how much they have in common with people far away. He said he was a translator for a garment company in town.
Like I said, he didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives, but he was so tenacious with following me and talking that I eventually made an excuse and started hurried away. But not before catching the Marriott tower from another angle. My clothes-translation friend asked me if I thought it looked like a rocket ship. And as inclined to like rocket ships as I am, I said it looked like a quartz crystal to me.
There are public restrooms all over Beijing, but none of them is made of marble or has large planters outside. Or a lobby.

Just after I snapped that one, I was assaulted by a shoeshine. Before I could get out of his way, he had slapped some goop onto my shoe and started buffing it with a cloth. I kept saying no and stepping away, but he wouldn’t stop. Come to think of it, I remember an almost identical thing happened to me once in Chicago, so it’s not a Chinese thing. Anyway, I ended up nearly kicking him in the face and walking off. He called after me for payment for the half shine. The goop is still on my shoe.
After a brief stop at my hotel, I headed back to Nanjing Street for dinner. That’s what it looks like lit up.
While I was waiting for my friend to show up, in between the Rolex salesmen and massage touts, a noisy motorcycle pulled up onto the sidewalk outside the subway station entrance. He was nice enough to pose for me, and liked the picture when I showed it to him.
And here’s the Coke bottle all lit up.

After that, it was back to the hotel. I was followed about halfway there by a couple of girls who started out wanting to practice their English, then to have some coffee or tea, then to help me find a good massage. My Blueberry had been buzzing off and on all day, so I knew the Olympics were in danger of delay if not outright cancellation unless I performed some emergency remote programming. I ended up logging on and working until midnight. Which was no fun since I would have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch my flight, considering how far the airport is from the center of town.

Will fatigue overcome our hero? Will he miss his plane to Japan? Will he ever get a break from work? What ever happened to the pigeons? These questions (some of them at least) and more will be answered in our next episode.

Flushed Away

When last we joined our hero, it was Tuesday night and he had just arrived at his hotel in Shanghai. Allowing for some privacy, we rejoin him the next morning.
This was the view from my third floor window. A little park and a bunch of tall buildings. The main thing about Shanghai compared to Beijing is that Beijing is a very old city, with history running back many centuries, but Shanghai is quite new, with only 150 years or so under its metaphorical belt. Plus it’s a seaport, and has never been a political or religious center, so there are no palaces or temples. Mostly office buildings and places for the people who work in them to live.

You can see it was a sort of grey day, and as I got ready to go out, it rained sporadically. But I was prepared – I had an umbrella with me. The hotel didn’t seem too far from the waterfront, so I set out on foot. As I walked, the rain increased, and by the time I got here…
It was a positive downpour. There’s the famous Pearl Tower across the Huangpu River, though you can’t see the top of it. I walked along the street for a while and found a place to cross over. The rain kept coming down, so I sought shelter in the first available place, which happened to be KFC. I ordered a wrap and an orange drink for breakfast and sat down to enjoy the sensation of not being pelted by gallons of water per minute.
Across the street is The Bund, which is a long line of classic European style buildings dating from the time when Shanghai was one of the few places in China where foreigners were allowed to do business. As in Beijing, construction is everywhere.

I enjoyed the Colonel’s hospitality for a while, hoping to see the rain slack off, but eventually I got bored and decided to brave the elements.
This picture is kind of crooked. It was not easy to take pictures with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other and struggling with the wind.
This odd creature shows up all over town. I think he’s a mascot for the 2010 World’s Fair for which the city is preparing.
Along the riverside, there’s a broad walkway which I’m sure is very nice under more favorable conditions. The building wearing a silly crown is an example of one of the goofy trends in Shanghai architecture. Quite a few buildings are patterned after flowers or pineapples or whatever.
There’s a lot of sculpture around, and some of it is the old traditional PRC style. This woman had an umbrella, but gave it to her companion to pose for the picture.
The river is very busy, with barges and container ships going by constantly.
This is not a World’s Fair mascot. I don’t know what the heck it’s supposed to be.

The rain kept increasing, to the point where my umbrella was only slowing the drops down, not stopping them. It was only slightly drier underneath than outside. Luckily a sign reading Landscape Coffee Taproom pointed the way to relief. I ducked in and ordered a mocha while the rain pelted the windows and completely overwhelmed the storm drains. I watched a staircase that led up to the walkway turn into a waterfall capable of sweeping away moderate sized animals. I think I saw a goat drift by.

I called up my colleagues from the Shanghai office of Emma Ticketmaster and got directions to their office along with lunch plans. Luckily it was not far. After a while, the downpour relented a bit and I continued on.

The office is in a large rounded glass tower at the corner of the Nanjing Street pedestrian mall, where several blocks of a central street have been closed to traffic in order to preserve the safety of shoppers and itinerant Rolex salesmen. Here’s the view from AD's office on the 12th floor:
After lunch, I went down to check out Nanjing Street.
As you can guess by the look of the signs, this place really lights up after dark. I was immediately accosted by men and women offering watches, luggage, electronics, DVDs, massages, and so on. There were also quite a few people begging for handouts.
Since the street is closed to cars, they have little shuttle trains to carry shoppers and tourists from one end to the other. Here’s one advertising mayonnaise.
And here’s another. There’s also one shaped like a big dog.
And here’s a giant coke bottle.
There’s a big toy store with this rockin’... er, whatever it is on the wall.
Here’s a massive shopping center with an impressive façade.
AD had told me about a museum that sounded interesting at People’s Square, which is just at the end of the pedestrian mall. The Square is a big park featuring gardens and several museums. This one with the odd top is where I was headed.
I liked this contrast.
And you can’t get away from this boy.
Another building with a goofy crown.
Just as Beijing has its Olympic countdown clocks all over town, so Shanghai has its own countdown.
This museum seems to exist mainly to hype the World’s Fair. There’s an exhibit about the history of such exhibitions.
They have a massive miniature version of the city. Notice the sign VIRTUAL WORLD behind the people. In there was a 360 degree screen showing a computer animated tour of what the city will look like at the time of the Fair. All I can say is if the fair grounds is half as impressive in reality as it looked here, it’s going to be pretty amazing. Their motto is “Better City, Better Life” and they’re focused on how cities can become more livable, sustainable, and cute.
This is the Shanghai Art Museum. I didn’t go in, and instead just sort of wandered around the park.
I bought a bottle of green tea and sat to rest my feet. This little girl terrorized pigeons for quite some time as other kids were trying to feed them.

And with that hair-raising cliff-hanger, we will pause to upload some pictures. Join us next time when our hero ventures further into the exotic depths of this city of the future.