Saying goodbye to Shanghai. Nevermind. We'll all be back.

A very autumnal weekend in Seattle has my recent time in China feeling even farther in the background. However, things in this rearview mirror are truly closer than they appear. I'm still spilling over thoughts of what I experienced there. I expect that will be the case for quite a while, especially as I turn some of the most relevant into part of an early chapter in my book, Pelting Out. Before I move on, consider this a quick drive-by of Shanghai thoughts. Hong Kong considerations to come tomorrow.

Anyone who talks or writes about Shanghai (including what I've put up here already) must spend some time on the crazy rate of recent growth. The idea that China's overall economy can continue to grow at 10% or thereabouts annually must be at least somewhat directly tied to Shanghai's consumption of resources and spending. I was struck by the distinct contrasts when we ventured just outside Shanghai. Two road trips in particular - to places named Yuyao and Haining - showcased the rampant consumption by the Chinese on both the retail and wholesale levels. Our bus driver got lost in Haining, which led to some harrowing turns. More importantly, I saw first hand that the whole city spills out in every direction like a busted up Mall of America. Or a scattered series of them, interspersed with older, but still not decrepit shopping locations. Eventually when we found the Haining mall we'd intended to visit in the first place, I got to see multiple generations of mall walkers doing laps on an otherwise uninspired mid-week morning. Anyone old enough to have survived Mao's Cultural Revolution and the assault that it directed toward capitalism must marvel at the 180-degree turn of China in less than half a century. I dare say China is now as much about buying things as they are about making things. And they do both very much like pros.

Our visit to Yuyao was also directed at a mall - this one comprised solely of luxury goods. Plopped in the midst of a seemingly endless low-rise collection of hutongs, this mall would have nonetheless looked right at home in any American high-end suburb. The contrast was disconcerting. I wasn't content staying within the comfy confines. So I ventured a few blocks in each direction with my camera. There - in the land of designer knock-offs and copy-cat producers - luxury was still the intended pose. Even when I saw shop keepers huddled among their goods, eating their lunches clutched up close to their faces. When I ventured just a bit farther and the theme of the shops changed abruptly, the people were nonetheless there. Sex workers staring out from behind sliding glass doors waved as I walked by. I presume there are very few Westerners strolling out there unless they had a very different sort of tour in mind. As so often proved the case in the larger cities, a solitary Western male walking invites the approach. If I had an RMB for every time I got propositioned with "lady bar?", I'd have been able to stake a place in one of the ubiquitous shopping areas I passed through. It never felt pushy or - as weird as it sounds coming from the sort of fella who would never venture into that world - inappropriate to get the casual proposition. It's just commerce - no different than someone trying to sell you a coat or a fake watch.

I left Shanghai feeling charged with an initial exposure to some of the beauty and contrasts of this part of China. I made snap judgments, as evidenced by these short recaps. Yet their obsession with appearances and the commerce of this roiling city stick out in my mind as something utterly intoxicating. Somehow I think we'll all be heading through Shanghai at sometime in the not-too-distant future. Not Shanghaied by a crimp in the old-timey sense of getting there. I'm talking free will and new commerce. To see how the Chinese will essentially be setting the economic agenda in the decades to come. What will Shanghai look like in ten years - as the world enters the DoubleTwenties (the decade length moniker I'd love to trademark already) - and how many people will lean that direction for guidance on what to buy and how to make it? That is one of the biggest questions I have as I look back. Looking forward, I'm sure such a focus will only sharpen.

For tomorrow, I'll start just after being pampered by Cathay Pacific Airways on our pseudo-international flight from Mainland China to Hong Kong. That's a big border to cross, even since the handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to China in 1997. I still don't understand the differences. But I'll tell you this - Hong Kong rocks with verve and just slightly to the left of the expected norm, much like the Nirvana back in the day.

Shanghai - sexy with a touch of scary

Next up in my after-the-fact travel recap - Shanghai. Before going, I tried to read rather broadly about China. However, my feel for Shanghai was the most tenuous. Its history is much less linear, given the control that the West enjoyed there. I couldn't have hoped to really see it as much more than a series of snapshots.

One superficial note on domestic travel in China. It was on my flight from Beijing to Shanghai that I encountered what a fellow passenger derisively called "Chinese fast food". A form of mystery meat with a terrifying reddish-gray color, smooshed up inside a lump of coal-shaped sandwich on not-quite-bread. Just horrible. Like everything else encountered along the way, I tried it. Most of the other passengers on our China Airlines flight felt no such obligation or resulting compunction. Good for them.

After spending four days in Beijing with a truly awesome tour pro offering ongoing commentary, the downgrade was massive when it came to my Shanghaiese guide, Leo. Whenever he tried to explain Shanghai, the word "sexy" became the primary modifier. As in, the sexiest women in all of China love the lucky men who happily did all the sexy cooking and cleaning and sexy shopping. Or something to that effect. I tuned it out pretty quickly. Still the appeal of the city is indeed aesthetically pleasing and very much charged with modern, um...raawwrr. That said, it's far too easy to concentrate on the countless and readily available Western restaurants and nightclubs meant to appeal in an urban Pan-Euro-American style of everywhere-ness. There's still ubiquitous more traditional street market options. Yet Shanghai feels much more governed by trendiness and up-to-the-moment cool. If there's a roiling edge that bleeds red hot futurism, it is definitely to be found in this city of 21 million people. If you go, run away from the Western hotels. They are a security blanket, and should be viewed as such. But one that can also smother and block out what else is going on. Just a tiny bit of which I felt somewhat exposed to in the short time I got to wander there.

Shanghai has grown ridiculously fast. On the "west" side of the Huangpu River (which largely splits Shanghai) lies Puxi - best represented in postcard form by The Bund (a riverside avenue lined with largely classical 19th Century architecture) and the main shopping thoroughfares likes Nanjing Street. Think classy Vegas, if it had a complex colonial history dating back over a century. So actually nothing like Vegas. On the other side of the Huangpu lies Pudong - the kaboom town, white-hot center of modern China built on a buried, probably forgotten but what do I know array of former slums. One-third of the world's entire collection of large construction cranes were in use there at any one time starting in the mid-1990s. We took a cruise to see just how gorgeous the contrast between each side of the Huangpu looked on a clear night. It's all stunning. But you get about as close to understanding what's going on either side of the river as you'd expect when you're floating along in the middle. Which is, not really much becomes clear at all. It sure does look purdy, though.

So I happily, naively rode the subway and got off in various parts of Shanghai. Which would have been merely been a launching point to bring up here with more detail. Had the news not come that a major accident on one of those subway lines occurred just a few days after I left Shanghai. No one was killed, but the 10 Line lost communications and at one point before two trains collided on the same track, they were traveling in the direction of each other. Ouch. Which also then reminds me of seeing, hearing, and marveling at China's new high-speed rail line running alongside the highway we took on one of our trips outside of Shanghai. That world's fastest rail line suffered a recent collision that was far scarier - 40 people were killed. The Chinese kept the trains running thereafter, but at marginally reduced speeds. Very little was officially said about the causes that everyone has opinions about - uneven engineering standards seems to be choice number one. An associated point being that Shanghai's entire subway system has been built in 15 years. Hell, most of the city's premier buildings were built during the same time. We Americans (most of whom have no business doing so) have spent a decade debating how to rebuild whatever will eventually reside on the World Trade Center site in New York City. I can't accurately quote a comparison for that time, but I'd wager that the Chinese have built enough residential and business space to house the entire population of NYC in that same timeframe. Do you think that pace of growth involves cutting a few corners? Surely it helps when you have a secretive, centralized, unquestionable government calling the shots and greasing the skids. Still, fast-track contruction of infrastructure is a serious - and sometimes dangerous - business. Don't ask me which is a better system. I'm just typing out loud.

Tomorrow, I'll get beyond the broad overview and describe more about the day trips we took outside of Shanghai. In effect, Shanghai was a bedroom for me to use amidst the larger purpose of seeing these other sites. A very, very cool bedroom with lots of room to unpack. And one that I hope to return to as soon as possible.

Slightly heroic views of The Great Wall and The Big Underpants

The one excursion from Beijing that gets the most outsized praise is a visit to the Great Wall of China. I easily overheard a dozen people around me say "bucket list" when they didn't know what else to say about the views. That's not to take anything away from the spectacle - it is a big ol' thing to behold up close and a somewhat challenging stairclimb. Chairman Mao Zedong gets consistently misquoted as having said that everyone who scales the Great Wall is a hero. Mao actually said you weren't a hero if you didn't climb it. Which is rather passive aggressive for someone who killed so many people in the camps. Anyhoo, I'm sure the term "hero" had more bite in the days before parking lots full of tour buses. As it is now, let's just say that all you prospective heroes should wear shoes for hiking and be prepared to hold your ground when the pushing begins. We picked the closest section - Juyong Guan. That section along with another nearby (Ba Da Ling), constitute the Great Wall for Dummies equivalent. The next time I go Wallin' you'll find me visiting the farther afield section (Mutianyu) where they actually have a giant metal slide coming back down. Seriously. For those day planning for Juyong Guan - expect seven towers up (that's how people measure the sections climbed) to get as far as you can go, 45 minutes each way if you're being truly heroic, save some time for pics, and you've got yourself an easy half-day excursion before heading back toward Beijing. If only Disneyland so easily minted heroes.

The remainder of our time in and around Beijing was mostly spent exploring the modern equivalent of what New York's garment district must have looked like in its heyday. Imagine men riding bikes pulling carts with huge bales of goods, while deals get done in open storefronts. At hand is the trade of goods worth oodles of "RMBs" - what everyone calls China's currency, the yuan. Beyond this life on the street somewhere north of wholesale, we also visited factories surrounded by countless brand-new high-rise apartment buildings anonymously scattered around the outer circumference of Beijing. All the energy and resources briefly re-directed to prepare for the Olympics in 2008 is now entirely focused upon building these elements of the business and residential infrastructure. I suppose it's too easy to say that if you wanted to see where jobs were being truly created in the world, look no further than these areas. But that doesn't make it feel any less true.

Tomorrow I'll move the recap beyond Beijing to Shanghai - a city with a lustier vibe for capitalism or whatever might best characterize what's going on in the business of China's daily urban and economic life. Yet I can't step away entirely from the good feeling I have for my short time in Beijing. The news isn't all good there. I was told Beijingers buy over 2000 new cars each and every day - the traffic reflects that consumption. I luckily hit a very short duration sweet spot for breathing without concern for the famously scary smog. And if you want a scary sight, just try using the public bathrooms in The Forbidden City. Still, even a few epically grumpy cab drivers couldn't take the edge off the way people welcomed me. The food came in waves of awesome, thanks mostly to our utterly fantastic tour guide (let me know if you're in the market, because my man Alan remains open for business, bright as China's future and good enough with the language to even dissect the folksiest American slang). For nerds, the history rocks. And the trajectory of Beijing is as upward and angular as the impressive CCTV Building. Which is not yet open, but does sport the single best landmark nickname in world right now - the Big Underpants.