Work trip to Shanghai, China - 24th to 28th March 2007

The Asia tour rolled on, into China, and Shanghai to be precise. I very quickly had my first encounter with the famous Chinese bureaucracy. On landing at the airport and trying to enter the country, I had to fill in 3 separate forms, and was warned of the dire consequences if I answered anything incorrectly. This was all despite the fact that I had previously queued up for 3 hours in London to get a visa, and told them a whole load of other information in the process! I did wonder what more they could possibly want to know, how many times they needed telling, and quite how bureaucratic they wanted to be. The biggest joke of all was that one of the forms was a health declaration, to enter the country that invented SARS and bird flu! On the way out there were another 2 forms, asking for exactly the same information.

Over my 4 days in Shanghai it struck me that, as a Westerner, you can pretty much live your life 100% in the way you are used to - only ever seeing imported things, only eating International food, and generally not having an authentic Chinese experience! The number of international restaurants (and yes, McDonalds does technically count I suppose), and foreign products available to buy, mean that you can pretty much totally carry on life as normal. Most things are even written in English as well as Chinese!

I had expected things to be much more difficult to navigate than that - I expected little non-Chinese writing, and little in the way of international or otherwise familiar things. In fact, the Chinese themselves seem to be enthusiastically embracing all things Western - so quickly and comprehensively that they are almost becoming more Western than many Westerners! Shanghai is definitely not typical of the rest of China, but it is a truly internationalised city, much more than I expected. Many of the streets and buildings look very European, and people, especially young people, speak English far more widely, and far better, than I thought would be the case. There are also huge numbers of foreigners in Shanghai, and you can probably eat a far wider range of international cuisine than many other cities that you would imagine to be more cosmopolitan.

One thing that was a bit different was the way you take your life in your hands every time you try to cross a street. Apart from the people on the corners trying to sell you fake Rolexes, DVDs, Mont Blanc pens, and even a computer at one stage (!), crossing the road is an experience that is definitely not for the faint hearted! Traffic is allowed to turn right on red lights - except that unlike in the US, they don't seem to be at all obliged to stop for any pedestrians crossing the road - they just drive at you and rely on you to move. There appears to be a rough pecking order of bus, lorry, taxi, car, bike, pedestrian - and if you are lower in the pecking order than your rival, you had better get out of the way! Amidst all this chaos, things do just seem to avoid hitting each other - I'm not sure how, but they do.

A day of sightseeing and three days of business meetings, all meant that I was whizzing around the city a fair bit. I very quickly ran out of business cards, because literally everybody that you meet, expects to exchange cards with you.

I don't know exactly what I had expected from Shanghai, but I do know that it was completely different to expectations, mostly for the better. Being China, I had expected a very strict place, with lots of proletarian workers all doing their service to the country. What I found was a city that is possibly more capitalist than many in Europe, the adverts for Budweiser, the Nike shops, and the race to buy expensive imported goods is as active here as anywhere else I've been.

What did surprise me was how cosmopolitan and open to the world Shanghai is - trends and ideas from the rest of the world have absolutely no problem in getting to the people here - and you get the feeling that as much as the multinationals want to sell to the Chinese, the Chinese are also extremely keen to buy what they have to offer. Young people in particular all seem to speak good English, and as well as Chinese food, products, culture and ideas, you can get things from literally all over the world here.

I think that Shanghai has something big in common with Dubai, in that there seems to be a huge gold rush on at the moment. Things are happening fast, huge skyscrapers are being built all over town, and the place seems to be changing at such a rapid pace, you could get left behind if you don't move fast. All of that, coupled with the obvious breakneck pace of growth in China, and huge opportunities for the future, makes this an incredibly exciting place to have visited. Shanghai is at the forefront of bringing China into the world, and it is amazing to have witnessed it happening at first hand.