Shanghai China

[jharkin]

Democracy is always a little less tidy. Much easier for China to force large scale development projects, for better or worse.

Quite true, and I believe they still have that residency registration system in China - i forget what its called - that prevents people in rural areas from moving into cities to keep things segregated.

 

[jharkin]

Oh interesting true story... Every day I would take a taxi from hotel to the office in the morning. There is a large parking/reception area in front of the lobby where taxi's pull up.

One day during the week we get there and the reception area is all roped out and guys in black suits are standing there turning the taxis away. So I get out on the street and have to walk through this special lane around the side to get in. I go upstairs, everything as normal and then I asked whats up....

One guess...


The local communist party was meeting in the building. Trade Union representatives from all the local companies had been "summonsed" to attend. They were all told that due to the dispute over the Daioyu/Senkaku islands all travel permits to Japan were being cancelled, and of course were encouraged not to be friendly to Japanese businesses, etc.


If I posted this while I was still there my internet would probably have been shut off, at minimum.

 

[fossil]

That is interesting.

 

[Eatonpcat]

Beautiful city, But that is a lot of people! Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed the pictures.

 

[begreen]

Very interesting thread jh, thanks for posting.

 

[Frozen Canuck]

Yes, thanks for the pics & info Jeremy. Some great sites to be sure. Many similiarities to North America. Interesting to see the differences as well. Good call on waiting to get home to post. No point rolling the dice when there is nothing to win & a great deal to potentially lose.

 

[woodchip]

Thanks for sharing.

Well worth waiting for........

 

[jharkin]

Dig this one up for a follow up. I went back this fall and they are still working on that new building, to be called simply the Shanghai Tower. They reached the max height of 2074 ft and are now glassing it in. It will be the sedond tallest building in Asia. The locals tell me it will open next year, I might be able to check it out next time I go.

We could sit and watch those cranes go all day from the office windows, fascinating.

 

[jharkin]

In related news, American Airlines has become truly horrible. One plane broke down causing a 5 hour delay. Another lost a piece of trim from the left wing in flight ( not amusing). Third had broken video and inoperative reading lights... For 13 hours!

Only one flight out of four made it without issues.

Stupid office travel department always books us on the cheapest. I should a known....

 

[begreen]

I learned long ago to pay a bit more and go with the best for very long flights. Asiana, Thai and Singapore airlines get a big thumbs up. Last flight to Europe was on Air France and that too was very nice.

 

[jharkin]

When traveling for work we don't have that option unfortunately.

 

[begreen]

Maybe ask if you can upgrade if you pay the difference?

 

[jharkin]

Maybe ask if you can upgrade if you pay the difference?

Ive tried. Company policy is you cant choose a flight any more than a certain dollar amount (couple hundred bucks I believe) more than the cheapest avalable, and they wont let you split the cost. you can buy a ticket and upgrade it yourself afterward directly through the airline, but no way am I paying cash for a business class upgrade! I have paid for economy plus seats before on Delta and United, but AAs rickety old first gen 777-200s dont offer them. Next time I'll try to pick my flying dates better so I can at least get on Delta...

15 years ago we used to get to fly business on any leg over 6 hours.. But the dot com crash killed that along with many other bennies

As far as Asian carriers... I know a couple professional pilots that refuse to fly on Asia/pac airlines due to safety records... Apparently that Asiana 777 crash (when they thought they were on full autoland, but had the autothrottle disabled and stalled it) was just an accident waiting to happen for many of those carriers - pilots over there are much more reliant on cockpit automation than US (and possibly European) pilots and dont get even a fraction of the practice time doing it the manual way that US pilots do and culturally if the command pilot makes a goof the rest of the crew wont question it even if they know something is wrong.... And when the automation fails they dont have a lot of practice taking over manually to recover.