From Hangzhou to Shanghai

Message sent to the family: "We're packed again and due to leave Hangzhou ... arriving at the Langham Boutique Hotel on Hankou Road in Shanghai at around 8p.m. ... Friday, Chris will be giving a presentation to Chinese customers and potential Chinese customers of QNX on the subject of The Changing Face Of Safety Critical Software before taking part in various discussions ..."

June 16th, Thursday

Four of our lunch party beside the MixC mall ice rink

It was still raining on our last morning in Hangzhou, but at lunchtime it eased off so that we felt the heat of the sun on our walk from Grandma's Kitchen at the MixC mall back to the hotel with Chris' QNX colleagues.

Me, Andy, Chris, Kimm, Yi and Bob, near the hotel

To match our initial welcome at the "golden ball," Chris and I had a send off fit for royalty, shaking hands with the many hotel staff who turned up for our departure, including the managing director; five or six people were eager to help us with our luggage. Jennifer, our initial hotel contact person, showed up looking as beautiful as ever and hopes to see us again. We would like that too. I put in a good word for our chambermaid, in the hope she'd be praised for looking after our room so efficiently.

The ride in the minivan hired from Hangzhou took just over two hours, a journey of about 200 km. Andy got the driver to stop half way so that he (Andy) could buy me a snack, one of those sticky rice pork dumplings of the Dragon Fest variety, actually quite tasty and a good idea, since we didn't get any other food till after 9 p.m.

Motorway service station between Hangzhou and Shanghai

Hangzhou's suburbs seemed to stretch for ever. After skirting the southern part of the city via the Grand Canal we followed the route the train takes, the railway being on concrete stilts all the way, incredible. Once again noticing many little towers with three balls on a spike on top, I asked about their significance. Apparently they mimic the Pearl of the Orient TV tower in Shanghai (yes, we saw that too; it glows pink in the dark) and they are an architectural feature of the local cities. Chris and I couldn't have done this drive by ourselves because of the incomprehensible road signs, but many hoardings and billboards were translated into English along the way

High Quality Baroque Flooring
Let the technology knows you better
Ecological Harmony, Happy Homeland

The landscape was mostly pylons in the soggy, flat fields that lay between the car dealerships and factories. I doubt that these fields will last much longer in this part of the world, but farm workers were still cultivating them in their straw hats, using ancient tools.

We kept stopping at toll booths where there were webcams to keep track of who was going through, or speeding, left Zhejiang province at one and entered Shanghai, after which the roadsigns became slightly more readable (e.g. "Hardened Verge"). We passed a shocking truck load of pigs packed like sardines on two levels, as I was still nibbling my pork dumpling. Then the Shanghai South Railway Station appeared ahead, like an enormous flying saucer that had landed in the midst of the new developments. Andy was very pleased with the smooth flow of traffic as we reached the downtown area of Shanghai. "I never see this fast," he said. "It's miracle!" The major buildings loomed ahead and flashed in the dark; the more ordinary ones were lit up at the higher levels ("to dress up the city," explained Andy) with the lower levels unlit. And so we homed in on our destination.

Arriving at our hotel in Shanghai, each of the ladies was handed a pink rose. It felt like walking into the 1920s as one of the western or westernized upper class, a playboy or a flapper. Jazz recordings of those old days were playing in the corridors and in our bedroom, too.

The nearby supper venue, Xian Qiang Fang, like the hotel, was vintage architecture and doubled as a Peking Opera theatre, complete with little boxes above us and curtains to the stage. Kimm's choice; she knows Shanghai. The dining area used to be a dance floor. With three more QNX people along, we saw a scene or two of the show, performed live by a man and a woman dressed very lavishly in the "Opera" garments, almost on a par with those worn by the bride and groom at our son's wedding, and singing or declaiming in that unique, highly artificial, whining manner that had caught our attention on the TV in Beijing. Chris thought the faces were masks but I think they were real faces got up to look like masks. We didn't have a clue what's going on, of course, but one of the gentlemen at our table told us that the female character was acting the part of an intoxicated concubine. The noise made by the accompanying instrumentalists (amplified erhus and drums) was absolutely ear-splitting and I was quite glad that we had taken our seats not long before the end of the act, because conversation between the nine of us round that supper table would have been impossible otherwise. But it came to an end as our first dishes were being brought out and we had another sumptuous umpteen-dish banquet served from the lazy Susan, as usual when people gather to eat in China. Eels yet again (we'd also had them for lunch) and one of those spiky fish with its mouth open, pieces of duck and what not. We did appreciate the sticks of green vegetable (asparagus?) but they tended to be too slippery to grasp in one's chopsticks without making a fool of oneself by chasing them all over the table.