Back to Shanghai once again!

I am back in Shanghai once again 2 weeks later. This time round the weather is colder than the last time. Lowest is -1 deg Celcius. Came prepared this time round with winter clothing, sweater and scarves.

Read the news on the plane that there is a snow storm hitting China which halted the trains in many provinces. Luckily Shanghai was not affected badly by this storm. However, according to the people I met in Shanghai, this is the first time in 17 years that Shanghai has snow on the ground for long period of time. Normally the snow will melt in the middle of the day.

Took a photo of the company we visited in Zhangjiang High Technology Park. This building is up for demolishing soon. In fact, this company will move out tomorrow to a new location.

Stayed in Grand Hyatt Shanghai again. Of course the benefit would be gaining more Gold Passport points. :-)
Took this photo from the hotel room window. The night scene in Shanghai is quite fantastic. Much given so by the fact that there are a lot of tall buildings in the city.

Shanghai - The Bund

This is the second day in Shanghai, meeting continued uneventful. After work was the great time.

After the meeting, Connie took us out for a short shopping while waiting for dinner. We went to the Bund for short sight-seeing. It was freezing cold outside with temperature of 0 deg C, therefore we did not stay too long out in the Bund. It brought back great memories for me as this is my second time to the Bund. I could still vivid recall the first time when I was here. Things did not change so much on this side of the Bund at Puxi. However, as I recalled there were some buildings across the river on Pudong that I did not remember seeing. That landmark building at sharp shape up with a sphere in the middle is still around. I wished Ai Yoong was with me. Maybe in the next trip, I would bring her along to experience the Bund together. This is a good dating spot for the couples in Shanghai for foreigners and locals alike.

A view from the Bund.

We took the subway for the first time and was supposed to go to the city museum. I was amazed to find from conversation with Connie that Shanghai does have quite a good network of subway. In fact, the subway network is still expanding, similar to their buildings which keep on mushrooming across Shanghai horizon. Indeed my impression of Shanghai changed after this trip. To me, in the past I felt that Shanghai is a rude place but this round I found that Shanghai does have more foreigners than in the past. One thing does not change though, the taxi here is damned hard to get. One would have to push his way in order to get one, guess the rudeness should still exist if this kinda situation still exist.

Too bad when we arrived, the museum was closed. We hanged around Raffles City mall for a while and then decided to head out for a Shanghai restaurant near the city stadium. Connie made a good choice as this restaurant is purposely decorated in the old Shanghai style. Tables and chairs are made like the peasants place in old Shanghai. There is even couple of musician playing the pi-pa and singing in Suzhou dialect. Of course, we did not understand a word of what was sang. Overall the food was good and atmosphere was not bad.

Connie paid for our dinner. She said that it must be her luck with us as she won RMB5 from the government lottery from the bill.

2 Days in Shanghai

Yesterday arrived in Shanghai at night time 10.30pm. This is my third time to Shanghai. First time was when I worked in my ex-company, Hitachi. The second time was the trip to visit DELL that I came with my colleague. Second trip was only for less than 24 hours, thus nothing much to see except met with DELL people.

The personnel/engineer of the company that we are visiting picked us up from the airport. This Pudong International Airport is quite a big airport. Ricky brought us to the hotel we are staying, Grand Hyatt Shanghai. Hotel is ok as usual for a 5 star hotel and prior to this, I was prepared by applying online for the Hyatt Gold Passport. Seems that during this period at least 1 night stay would allow me to be upgraded to Platinum member for a year. In this case, I became Platinum member until Feb 2009. Lucky!

After a tiring day of meeting, we were threated to a Szechuan dinner besides Shangrila hotel. The restaurant definitely had a great view of Shanghai city across the river. I didn't bring my camera but managed to take couple of photos with my Sony Ericson k750i handphone camera.

View from the restaurant looking over to Puxi, the old part of Shanghai city.

Walked through a mall after finishing dinner in photo above. Noticed the word Spring (in Chinese) on the billboard. Chinese New Year this year is near on the first week of Feb. Shanghai is full of lively new year decoration welcoming the year of the Rat. Here in China, they call the Chinese New Year as Spring Festival instead.