Orient Express

So it turns out that Shanghai is big (really big), wet, grey and really rather impressive.

Sadly, in the two days I was out there I didn't really get much of a chance to see a lot of it.  This was mostly due to the perpetual fog (it was fog and not the smog I'd been warned about) and torrential rain.  But in the pouring sky waters, it did have a charming Blade Runner air to it and I got to see enough to understand why most other visitors are impressed.

From the view on the 29th (of 60) floor of my well appointed (and surprisingly good value) hotel, I sampled the striking view out over a tiny section of the city, complete with all its neon lighting and graphic displays twinkling, flashing and throbbing away in the evening.  Cranes jutted out of the scenery here and there and the city looked like it was just alive.  Old concrete tower blocks were being demolished while next to them new skyscrapers were rising out of the ground.  Parks were dotted around and glitzy malls and condos mingled with ancient temples and little shikumen districts - it was a bit like a successful game of SimCity, only faster and with better traffic animations.

A telephone's excuse for a photograph

On visual inspection, the people seemed happy, busy, healthy and - in some places - doing rather well for themselves.  And the vast majority were suspiciously young.  I don't know what they did with everyone over the age of 50.

No wonder the US finds this all so threatening.  And - given how massively dependent we in the UK are on our rather easily replicated service industry - how threatened we should probably feel too.

But if they are going to take over the world I have one piece of advice for them - guys, it's an awful lot easier to take the bones out of animals before you cut them up and cook them.


It also got me thinking about how challenging it would be to be an expat stuck out there, mainly due to the language barrier.  More importantly, it got me thinking about how intimidating it must be for anyone to have to come over to the UK for any length of time for work and how it's hardly surprising that if you come from a very different cultural background, your first reaction will naturally be to try and find some semblance of familiarity, be it a segregated enclave or the local Irish pub.

Strange that we find communities of our "expats" in other countries perfectly reasonable but find "immigrants" (the UK media rarely distinguishes different visa types when discussing "foreigners") distasteful.