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Notes on Dec 25, 2007, Christmas, First full day in China
Mr. Bob Mattice (Melanie’s colleague) and Mrs. Huang (our translator) met us at 8:30 sharp with a van at the Shanghai Ramada Pudong near the airport. It was a grey day with no sun for orientation to the compass, so directions are still a mystery. We got on a long freeway. The van was pretty full though later we added two more people for lunch and it got fuller. Cab drivers weave in and out of other traffic continuously to the next space in traffic, space being any void, however transient, the vehicle can fit through. All of the roadway is fair game. They use horns and bright lights liberally to notify the other drivers. They continually cut each other off and compete to get ahead. No one gets upset when they get edged out. No gestures or any comments, they just keep working the situation for the next opening. It’s not personal, it’s just the way everyone drives.
We crossed the river on a big suspension bridge into the main city of Shanghai, and stayed on the same freeway until exiting to visit a sterilization facility in a business park just off the freeway. The trip seemed to be about an hour and traffic moved along at a brisk pace. Over the entire day we saw one car broken down on the side of the road with a tow truck retrieving it. Otherwise, everything kept moving. I think Chinese love to drive as much as Americans, and they drive anything they can. Cars, bikes, 3-wheeled tricycles, motorcycles, many small construction vehicles that are three wheeled with a single motor and drive wheel pulling various cart arrangements with buckets and platforms. The motors are exposed, like big lawn tractor motors and the drivers sit on a bicycle seat wrestling these things with a pair of handlebars.
Anyway, the sterilization facility uses gamma radiation from a plutonium isotope to kill everything in the sterilization room. Aluminum containers roll into the room through a portal on a system of conveyors, then work their way around the room getting exposed to the radiation source from all angles. They exit another portal and they’re done. Every six months the radiation source gets replaced, recharged, with new raw nuclear material. They showed us a power-point and I photographed the slides.
Bob said that businesses here are set up through the state, beginning with a business plan. People have limited title to their houses. After 40 or 50 years they move out. In the city people mostly live in condos and apartments, and we passed mile after mile of them. We saw a few netted driving ranges but didn’t see any golf courses.
After the sterilization facility we came back up the freeway to the Pudong side of the river to another manufacturer. The first thing to do was have lunch.
Restaurants and shops are full of workers. The ratio of workers to clientele in our lunch spot was around 10 or 20 to 1. We had lunch at a restaurant pronounced like Hwang Tsoo. No idea if that is close. Everyone eats in little apartments with a server at the door who brings dishes in, puts them on a turntable. The meal started with a visit to the food showroom full of fish tanks and troughs of live food and examples of the various dishes. Dozens of tanks line one wall, dozens of troughs form an island in the middle, one wall has all of the fresh veggies. I wouldn’t be surprised if live cows were out back.
We were the guests of this manufacturer, and two of their senior women ran things at lunch, ordering food and managing the restaurant. Tastes were exquisite and wonderful. People sampled the food as the dishes came buy. There was a rhythm to eating and drinking with lots of toasts, lots of conversation, laughter and warmth. Bob is a great host and negotiator and works smoothly through transactions of all sorts, meals, transportation, hotels, happening after a negotiation that involves give and take to arrive at a price.
Bob and I had beer – pronounced Pee Joe – and a sherry-like drink. Men drink and get to use toothpicks after the meal. Women are not expected to do either though Mrs. Hwaung used a toothpick at lunch and Melanie had a peejoe at dinner. When you use a toothpick you shield the activity with your spare hand.
We returned to the factory for a quick tour of the operation, a look at samples, a photo, then on to the airport.
We flew China Southern to Wuhan, and took 2 cabs to a hotel on a pretty lake on the far side of town. Our cab followed and I don’t know how he kept a connection to the one in front, or if he even knew our destination. Very impressive driving. The main drag in town is a giant strip of high rise offices and large lit up buildings. Most buildings have neon light art that runs all over the building, a cross between Vegas and Manhatten. The street is full of action with people everywhere you look. This scene went on for mile after mile for probably 30 minutes. I saw an estimate somewhere that Wuhan is a city of 9 million, and many of them were out on the town last night. Maybe it was because of Christmas. Christmas is big and getting bigger here. Many wait staff wear Santa Clause suits and hats and everyone wishes you Merry Christmas. Bob said Christianity was the fastest growing religion in China and the government printed 40 or 50 million official bibles last year. The growth of Christmas, he said, however, is mainly due to its commercial potential and its stimulation of the economy. We’ve seen way more overt Christmas spirit here than at home.
Then again, that applies to everything. China is saturated in every regard and no matter what it is, there’s tons of it. Every wealth and poverty level, every age of building from ancient run down piles of stone, dirt floors, no windows or doors, dark, to high rise lit up skyscrapers, and people of all sorts to match, though old people and children are both largely absent from where we’ve been. We haven’t seen any hospitals.
The freeway through Shanghai, I’m guessing 30 miles of it, is lined with perfectly manicured gardens. These are anywhere from 50 to 100 yards deep on both sides of the road, with dozens of species of trees and bushes, all with painted trunks for, I assume, termite control, and the numbers are probably in the millions. All this is maintained by hand. It must take an army of thousands and thousands just to maintain these freeway gardens. We also saw the maglev train zipping along extremely fast from the airport to the river. Bob said it goes 230 miles an hour. It’s a demonstration project and apparently very expensive.
At one point on the way to the factory before lunch, the driver went the wrong way and we ended up in a place we were probably not scheduled to see. One street for a couple blocks had many shops with attractive girls sitting in the windows. It didn’t seem polite to mention it at the time but later, Melanie and I agreed that these were probably women for rent or maybe even for sale.
I’m sure I’ve left out as many things as I remembered. Moving on to days 2 and 3 now.
The hotel in
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