I Love China

That’s all folks. The Shanghai World Expo still has a couple of months to run before it ends on 31st October but as of now, they’re not selling any more standard day and 3-day tickets. As far as I can gather, it’s because there are still many people who have tickets but have not yet used them and the organisers are concerned they might all just show up at the same time!

WoAi still has a couple of tickets and will therefore be visiting before the Expo ends. I got an email from the British consulate informing me that I can visit the UK pavilion without lining up for 4 hours. Although I’ve heard there’s not much to see inside, the only way to get a decent photograph of the exterior is by standing in the open public space that is within the pavilion area that is surrounded by a wall. So I plan to pick a nice day and then go snap a few shots as well as visiting a few more places I didn’t manage to see on my first visit back in May.

The whole city is awash with talk about the typhoon that’s supposed to pass close to Shanghai today. Even my taxi driver this morning kept looking at the sky with a puzzled look on his face as he looked in to the perfect blue skies. I’m afraid I’m quite cynical because we rarely get typhoons in Shanghai and the last “big” one that was a huge news story here ended up being nothing more than some light drizzle and a pleasant breeze.

But hey, better safe than sorry, so take all your plants (and underpants) off the balcony and lock up your children (schools and kindergartens are apparently closed today).

Don’t cancel your evening dates though. The typhoon is predicted to be closest to Shanghai around noon, so whatever happens at lunch time is about as bad as it’ll get. I’ll be out with not one, not two but three gorgeous Shanghainese ladies this evening, so I don’t care if I have to roll up my trouser legs or swim through flooded streets in my business suit, I’m still going out!

When I lived in London we used to complain about the traffic. You’d often hear someone complain they’d been stuck in traffic for an hour. In China of course, all the numbers are bigger – bigger GDP, bigger number of mobile phone users, bigger population, bigger number of cities and bigger traffic jams. In fact, some drivers on the Tibet to Beijing expressway have been stuck for 9 days, in a 100km jam, with no end in sight.

Imagine the telephone conversations : mum, I’m stuck in traffic, might be a few weeks late for dinner.

In 2007, China overtook Germany to become the world’s 3rd largest economy, but now, it’s officially the world’s number two economy, having overtaken Japan (the second largest economy since 1968 – the year I was born) in quarter 2 of 2010. The US is still by far the world’s largest economy, but let’s see how long that lasts. China would need to expand its economy by another 200% to catch the current US level, which is 10% a year for the next 20 years. Of course that assumes the US economy doesn’t grow at all, which is unlikely, but it’s exciting to think that if I keep going to the gym, eat lots of vegetables and avoid breathing the heavily polluted air, I could possibly live to see China become the biggest economy in the world!

Wo Ai Zhong Guo!

I may have mentioned before my work involves statistics, which is why I am always interested when I read about some interesting statistics related to China. The numbers here are staggering and mind boggling and that’s why it’s so interesting living and working here. For instance, yesterday I read that there are now 800,000 dogs registered in Shanghai. One isolated statistic is pretty meaningless unless you give a reference point so people can relate to the number. So let me try and put that in perspective for you: the population of San Francisco is about 800,000 people. Yes, that means there are as many dogs in Shanghai as there are people in California’s 4th largest city. Imagine San Francisco inhabited solely by dogs!

I’ve heard some amusing stories about people’s experiences of the iPad in China. It does appear that many Chinese consumers want one, but they aren’t really sure why. In fact, they don’t seem to even know what it does!

Not long after the iPad was launched, a friend of mine changed her MSN tag to “I want an iPad”. A few days later, the tag proudly read “I just bought an iPad”. And the next day “does anyone know how to use iPad?”

Then yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine and she mentioned one of her friends recently bought an iPad, but after just two weeks, she’s trying to sell it because she doesn’t understand how to use it and doesn’t find it useful.

Much of China is still relatively poor, but in the big cities like Shanghai, it appears there are many people with more money than they know what to do with, so they spend most of their day thinking of new things they could buy and only AFTER buying will they work out if it’s something they actually need.

Perhaps they could follow in the footsteps of billionaires George Lucas, Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who have just pledged to give away half or more of their entire wealth. I’ve often wondered, as I’m sure you have too, what it must be like to have 47 billion dollars and what on earth drives them get up and go to work every morning. How would an extra billion or two change their lives, and conversely, would their lives be any different if they had a few billion less? Obviously not.

So I have to applaud them then for making such a genrous gesture for charity. Mind you, I bet they all already have iPads!  Which reminds me, I didn’t notice Steve Jobs in the list of billionaires giving money away – shame on you!

Here’s a video of a robber holding a hostage and subsequently being shot 4 times by a plain clothes police officer. There seems to be some controversy about the fact the police woman shot the guy an additional 3 times after the threat seems to have been eliminated. Obviously there are two ways of looking at this – she could be seen as a hero saving the life of an innocent girl, or some might feel she used more force than necessary to diffuse a situation which might have been concluded peacefully.

Either way, I found the footage gripping. I certainly would not have thought she was a police woman and was even more surprised to see she had a gun hidden in her pants. And I am not sure if it was just luck that allowed the hostage to escape unharmed instead of being shot in the face, but I suppose that’s a hard one to call, not having the benefit of police firearms training.

I thought this had to be worth a mention, especially since I just got back late last night from a trip to Guangdong province. A mall in Guangzhou held a competition to see if anyone could undo 8 bras in under a minute. If I had the chance, it would be one of those rare occasions I would not be ultra competitive but instead I’d probably feign ignorance and try reaching round to undo from the front. But that’s just me!

If one picture isn’t enough for you there’s another in The Telegraph which is priceless. I think the guy just came in his pants!

I love how the 8 girls are all wearing masks to protect their identities!

Next to the UK pavilion was the Dutch pavilion. It’s dubbed “happy street” and I guess the idea here was for it to be fun and not too serious. It was the only pavilion that wasn’t actually open when I first saw it. There was some kind of opening ceremony later in the morning with lots of people in business suits and a large group of photographers and finally we were allowed in. I say in, the entire pavilion is really just a spiral ramp you walk up and down and along the way there are various small individual rooms that are locked but with windows so you can look inside. Read the rest of this entry »

The UK pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo

Ow, ow, ow! That’s what I say every time I try to walk. My feet are in a very delicate state after 12 hours of walking the 5 square kilometre Expo site on its first day of opening to the public. To add to that, it seems summer timed its arrival to coincide with the Expo opening, so not only did I sweat like a pig, but my arms are a nice shade of pink and are going to be quite sore for the next few days, I’m sure. So was it all worth it? Well, yes. Read the rest of this entry »