Shanghai Factories

  Shanghai, China
Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Old and new buildings

Can there be a more beautiful city than Shanghai charmed by the Yangtze Riverfront curving through its center? From our window in the Seagull Hotel, sunrise casts its lively tones across a landscape of the flashiest skyscrapers boasting the best in architectural design. The riverfront is made more enchanting by the early morning exercises of its citizenry. Stretching, walking, running, dancing, sword wielding, and kite flying adults of all ages perform a charming daily ritual everywhere space permits. Colorful, syncopated, expressive and showy, everyone takes time to relish life and share the cool morning air. The rising sun covers everything in yellow hues and reflected blue skies. You think you want to move here and be part of the vibrancy of life. Walking through the city's streets, it continues everywhere.

Boom boxes spill traditional tunes across squares and boulevards filled with friends dancing together, orchestrated Tai Chi using colorful fans, or catching up with old friends. Shops don't open until 10am so there is time taken for enjoyment and relationships. Soon however, the sidewalks begin to fill with competition. Just a trickle at first, then a stream as pedestrians, bicycles and motor scooters flood the streets en route to work. Photos don't show the swarming ebb and flow of people moving as great schools of fish. It is intriguing so I launch in among them trying to work my way back to the river and find the hotel. Intersections are a curious mix of people and machines crossing paths. As our pedestrian column crossed the street a bicyclist drove into us at full speed, only to pass through without concern from anyone but me. One just adjusts one's pace to accommodate everyone else's race to get where they are going. At an intersection of Nanjing Rd. where police wanted to control the flow of pedestrians and traffic, it requred 12 uniformed officers, two at each corner and four in the street.

Back at the hotel it is 8:30am. All the exhaust in the city is making a yellow-gray haze and it is getting hard to breathe with the heat and humidity. Looking out the window at the riverfront skyline again, the scene has changed. No color, no kites, no people having fun. Just infinite concrete shapes rising in a colorless sky laden with smog above a polluted river of old barges. The magic is gone and we head out of Shanghai to other industrial cities to the west.

Pearl TV Tower

Shanghai is huge and growing at an unbelievable pace. China is gobbling up much of the world's stocks of concrete agents. You certainly see why here. This city of 22 million people is almost all under construction. But then so is every neighboring city along with the rural areas in between. Massive skyscrapers and high rise apartment complexes under construction appear everywhere we go all day long. Also amazing is the incredible number of boom cranes atop each project of which there seems no shortage.

Monte and Kane

Kane is the chairman of a large diversified manufacturing firm here that produces office furniture and industrial clothing in several factories across the region. Monte is here contracting with him to build an additional line of office furniture to supplement the various lines his company has been building in Phoenix and selling around the US.

A three hour drive towards Nanjing takes us to one of Kane's factories where the business at hand is conducted. Afterwards we were taken to a sumptuous lunch at a fancy Chinese restaurant nearby. We were served upstairs in a private room with the company's executives. As the many dishes were being ordered by our host, Monte mentioned that we don't eat seafood or pork. Dinner came in several courses with beautiful presentation; shrimp, fried rice with ham, dumplings with ham, tofu with bacon strips, catfish, and several vegetable dishes accompanied a dish of cold chopped chicken including bones and claws with trimmed nails. We ate lots of vegetables and chicken and were nicely filled. "Shi-shi" (thank you)! At 5pm we arrived at the second factory located back in the outskirts south of Shanghai where more business was conducted and I shot more video.

Last year I showed the congregation some slides of church happenings around the world. One was of a member in Shanghai posing at the Riverfront with the Pearl TV Tower in the background. Where he stood is right below our hotel window and tonight the buildings take on colors of their own.

Dinner

Tonight Kane took us to dinner at a fancy restaurant along with some of his local friends including some young Shanghai business ladies and a national sports star.

3 young ladies

From left to right: Vanessa (an agent for an international lodging firm), Mickey (a stewardess for Air New Zealand), Chris (an MBA student hoping to study in London). They came along to dinner as fans of Kane's friend, Wei Pu who is captain of China's soccer team. Anticipation is building here for the World Cup being hosted by Shanghai next month. Wei's picture is in all the press here as the big day approaches (that's her photo in a magazine on the left of the page break). As we plan to root for her and her team in the World Cup she mentiones that China is a #10 underdog compared to the USA team which often wins. Here, rooting for her team seems natural in support of new friends. Yet doing so back home would feel unpatriotic in international politics.

China team captain

We finally managed all clean food at dinner. The large ocean fish was boiled whole then chopped into small pieces; head, tail, bones and all. Kung pao chicken was typical but with hotter peppers. The evening was educational and enjoyable. We stopped at an electronics store and obtained an SD card reader that will enable me to finally post blogs and photos through Monte's laptop.

Pearl Tower at night

Ready for bed we gaze out our hotel window again. Here, lit by a rainbow of colored lights, the city skyline radiates blue, purple, red, green and yellow on spherical and vertical shapes that make this such an interesting place. Even the riverboats promenading before them are awash in neon lighting. The brilliant colors rising in the sky sparkle in the river and reflect in the overcast. It's a Disneyland-ish environment that appeals to the senses even as warm aromas of roasting meats fills the air. The riverfront is alive once again with people celebrating life after work. Sidewalk restaurants fill with strollers taking in the sights and sharing the good parts of life. The magic is back.