Shanghai: Home away from home

I am sitting in my room at the Shanghai Central Hotel overlooking Shanghai’s skyline and feeling completely at home. I know only three words of Chinese, but the city feels like any other U.S. city.  I know that seeing Michelle and the kids made us all feel at home; and the fact that Anupam feels very comfortable in the city helps a lot too. But, from Tibet to Shanghai, there is a difference of 18,000 feet of altitude and attitude.  It is a study of contrasts.

In the morning, we went to an upscale (all name brand stores) shopping area that is made to look like an old neighborhood. It is amazing to see how realistically OLD the place looked, including old pictures, gramophones and clotheslines, etc.

    New shopping center made to look like Old Shanghai

We ventured on to the subway system to the “fake” market. The subway is almost like BART, but lot more elaborate and efficient. The market is huge, full of everything you ever wanted and every brand name you have heard of. I, for sure, did not know most of the designer names ;-)

Walking over to the tall beautiful buildings is an experience in and of itself. This is my third trip to Shanghai and the buildings have sprouted all over the Pudong area. These are taller, and architecturally much more interesting and unique. Sitting in the lobby of the Park Hyatt on the 87th floor drinking tea, eating DIM SUM and looking at the newer and taller buildings, Anupam pointed out that yesterday that we were in Tibet which is higher than 100 of these buildings put on top of each other J (An interesting thought. . .)

    Google building (Google is banned here) and other buildings

    View from 87^th floor of Park Hyatt

Michelle showed up with the kids and made us feel completely at home.

We went to the Jade Garden. It is an over 1,000 years old residential garden, house, and shopping area (owned by a rich merchant, taken over by the government during cultural revolution).  We had lunch at a restaurant where Clinton ate Dim Sum, and then came back over-stuffed with food. Emma and Angie played in our hotel rooms and made us feel very much at home.

    Jade Garden

    Old Shanghai

    Getting a custom made suit

Walking on the Bund after dark is an experience that can happen only in China - thousands of young people in their best fashion clothing, socializing for several hours everyday.

Only in Shanghai: 

• Thousands of people socialize on a normal weekday like it is New Years Eve. 
• Getting a custom suit made in less than a week. 
• Buy all sorts of designer things 
• People dressed up ALL the time. 
• Everyone is on smart phone all the time. 
• Selfies and smart phones.  
• No one gave me seat on the subway (big change from last time) :-(

Good night for now….