Shanghai China: Sun Nov 14- Wed Nov 17

The architecture in China was phenomenal and Shanghai was definitely the most stunning. The hotel I stayed in, JW Marriott Tomorrow Square, was no exception. The tall building in the picture below with the top that looks like a scepter is the hotel. You have to go up to the 38th floor to get to the hotel lobby, the lower floors are for hotel residents who stay there long-term like apartments.

JW Marriott Tomorrow Square (Day)

Shanghai was much different than Beijing and Tianjin. Tianjin/TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area) is an industrial area with a lot of power plants and factories, like Motorola's. Beijing is the Country's capital and has a lot of old architecture. Beijing also has a lot of new architecture as well, but they are interlaced with a significant amount of culture like the Forbidden City. Shanghai is the economic center and is very new age and high class. There are stunning buildings in every direction and more going up everywhere. You definitely get a sense being in China of how much power they have. They are able to build pockets of 15 skyscrapers simultaneously all over the cities.

JW Marriott Tomorrow Square (Night)

I arrived in Shanghai by myself on Sunday night and went to the first supplier: Molex on Monday and the second supplier: Amphenol on Tuesday. Then flew back to the US on Wednesday.

After spending the day at Amphenol on Tuesday the supplier took my out for dinner. When the Amphenol rep and I first made it to the restaurant for dinner, he thought we had reservations at this seafood restaurant that had all of the fish and crab out for show as you walked in. Lucky for me he had the restaurant wrong and we ended up going to the Italian restaurant that was just next door. When I had dinner at the Szechwan restaurant in TEDA they brought the fish out in a bucket still flopping to get our approval before cooking it up for us. From what I hear, that is pretty common practice at the nicer restaurants in China. Shanghai is famous for their "Hairy Crab". I'm not sure what is special about it taste-wise, but it has hairs all over it's legs. Again, I was very grateful we had Italian instead :). The Italian restaurant was called Da Marco. Dinner was an interesting conversation because I was there with two people from Shanghai, the sales rep from Florida, a guy from France with an awesome accent and a guy from Italy. I had to pay close attention to the conversation in order to keep up with all of the accents.

There is an area of Shanghai called the "Bund". It is a series of buildings that were built by the British and later occupied by the French, US, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc. Their architecture stands out amidst the rest of the buildings since it is very British. It is a strip of buildings next to a small river that separates the "older" part of Shanghai from the "new". The area across the river didn't exist 5 years ago, but now is a densely populated group of skyscrapers. Most of the buildings on the new side of the river have gigantic displays that cover the entire face of the building that play commercials to the rest of Shanghai. I drove by the Bund and saw the buildings on the other side of the river after going to dinner with the supplier on Tuesday night.

The Bund Layout

We drove by the Bund in the evening so this picture is what it looked like.

I wanted to get some last-minute shopping in before I left Shanghai for the US. I asked the supplier that I was visiting if they knew of a good place to buy souvenir type stuff. He recommended the Yu Garden. I checked out from my hotel at noon and had one hour before I needed to leave for the airport. I left my bags behind the desk at the hotel and caught a cab over to the Yu Garden. I ran around for that hour trying to see as much as I could and bought some good stuff: Christmas gifts and an awesome Great Wall souvenir (hand cut stone picture of Great Wall inlaid in glass). After I was done I had to find a cab to take me back to the hotel, which I was a little worried about at first because the Yu garden is a maze of alleys and streets lined with stores and kiosks and I had gotten turned around and pretty deep into it so it took me a few minutes to get far enough out to find a cab. It all worked out though. I caught a cab back to the hotel and then the supplier had lined up a driver to take me from the hotel to the airport.

Entrance to the Yu Garden (or at least where the taxi dropped me off)