Monday, May 4, 2009

Day 2 - Shanghai city tour and free time



This morning started with a luxurious breakfast at the Westin, complete with two omelette chefs, full western AND eastern breakfast bars. A lot of us stuffed ourselves silly trying a bit of everything. A bit behind schedule we boarded our bus for a tour of the city. We went to the Shanghai Jinmao tower - the second highest building in China at 88 stories. It offered a wonderful view of the Bund and surrounding landscape. Its amazing to me that twenty years ago the entire east side of the Haungpu River was mud flats. Shanghai really has had amazing growth in that time, especially in the past 9 years.

After Jinmao, we went to the "Old Market" - a ocllection of buildings jammed together rebuilt in the classical style, with the curved roofs and everything. Its somewhat of a touristy area, loaded with tour buses and their groups, tons of tiny shops selling Y5 "silk" ties and other nicknacks. After a quick stop at Starbucks (yes, located right in the heart of the market), most of us followed our tour guide Candy to an authentic silk manufacturer. We saw first-hand how real silk is produced and processed - boiling hundreds of silk worm coccoons and hand-picking the threads to spin it into threads. We even got to try our hand at stretching silk out to make cool-in-summer and warm-in-winter silk-filled quilts.

After some more free time in the market, we loaded up to our third destination, the People's Square. This area used to be a hippodrome (a racetrack), that was leveled with the revolution and turned into a nice park and now sports a collection of cultural buildings surrounding it. From here we scattered like plum blossoms in the wind. Some went to the French Concession (which is very large - 10 sq. km.) and visited wine bars or communist propaganda museums. Others visited the National Museum or the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. And some made the bold and decisive decision to go back to the hotel for a much needed nap.

At 6:30 we joined a group of eight future Fuqua students for cocktails in the hotel bar. It was nice meet some more students for the Class of 2009 and disucss where they're from, why they're going to Fuqua, and some of their hopes and fears. After spending some time in Shanghai, I can certainly see that relocating to rural Durham would be a bit of a shock. I wish them all good luck over the summer and next year.

Way too quickly, we had to leave for dinner at M on the Bund, an upscale world-fusion restaurant in Building 5 on the Bund. The view from the terrance was impressive, and the food was a unique collection of international specialties, but mostly French-influenced. Towards the end of the meal, Juan Pablo decided we needed to go karaoke and started saranading the restaurant with his favorite 80s music. After dinner we forewent karaoke, and went to a roof-top bar futher down the Bund for drinks and to continue to soak in the view. It struck me that Shanghai was unusually quiet - except for the late night jackhammering. The traffic noise was there throughout the day, but I don't recall once hearing any ambulance, fire, or police sirens. Even the car honks seem to fade quickly on the tree-lined broad avenues.

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