Mum & Dad, having completed their main tour from San Diego back up to San Francisco, now have a couple of weeks with me in the Bay Area. We took the opportunity of having good weather to cross the Golden Gate and spend the weekend in Marin. Day 1: antique shopping in Petaluma, and Day 2: a fantastic walk in the sun, retracing our steps to Alamere Falls. After the manufactured saccharine charms of SoCal, I think it was a breath of fresh air.
The pleasures of living in California … while it is a bit of an effort to get up to the slopes, it’s worth it. This time, it’s Squaw; a much larger, almost European resort, and host to the 1960 Winter Olympics. Super amazing (if cold) conditions were marred only by having ski boots that were a size too big … something to add to the shopping list.
One of the pleasures of walking around the neighbourhood is checking out the exotic (and not so exotic) machinery on display. Everything from immaculately-prepared hotrods, through to European rust-buckets.
Explaining why three male, unmarried room mates from Taipei were in San Francisco for ‘entirely independent’ reasons, raised some eyebrows amongst the people that we met. But honest, Abe was visiting family, Armando was jetting through en-route to Austin, and I was leaving Texas on the way back to Asia. These things don’t happen an awful lot, so I was bursting to see what it would be like to meet them in a country where we all speak the same language as the locals.
Through some minor level of planning, we found ourselves on a night out in a relic of 1970s kitcsh, The Tonga Room, complete with Filipino funk band that floats out into the middle of a small lake in the middle of the bar, and retreats again when the rain starts pouring down (yes).
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Badly made cocktails, silly dancing and some sore heads set us up for a great morning of brunching and procrastinating on starting a hike off in Marin county…
I am lucky enough to be in Europe for the whole month of December, joyfully mixing two weeks of work, with two weeks of time with family and friends.
The weather is cold. So cold, in fact, that it has delivered several dumps of snow and layered a delightful crust of frost over the fields on the way to the airport. To Paris!
Latest update on the Pudong transformation.
I seem to be travelling to China a lot recently. This time, mixed in with some supplier visits and research (oh, and picking up an iF China design award for my wee Vostro V13), I decided to whisk Nikki off for a weekend in the big smoke. Since she had not been to China before, the main aim was to give her a chance to see a quick cross-section of the place.
Looking at China, and especially Shanghai, through the lens of a Taiwanese person is a really interesting experience. In some ways, it’s like an American person visiting London for the first time, but in other ways the comparison falls apart. China is not a small island separated from it by thousands of miles of ocean, the roles of economic upstart are flipped in favour of the ‘homeland’, and of course the political status of the ‘settled’ land is far from clear.
Most of the time when I am with Taiwanese people in China it is for visiting the multitude of factories that supply components for Dell; themselves mostly run by Taiwanese bosses. In these times, they are excessively protective and mollycoddling, and I will find myself being whisked around the Yangtze river delta plain for hours on end in shaky VW Santanas, in order to wait in dimly lit rooms for hours more, only to have a twenty minute-long meeting about something they should or should not be doing. If you choose it to be, it is the purest description of boredom and frustration, and for this reason I travel solo whenever I have the opportunity; thus, working out the train system. It also means I avoid the round-table dinners when I need a night off, scheduled as they are with heavy drinking, heavier food, uncomfortable conversation and thinly-veiled sliminess from the sales guys.
It also makes travel with Taiwanese in China on personal time that much more pleasant – curiosity, modesty and politeness from the Taiwanese, in a sea of nail clippings, car crashes, shouting, and general rudeness is at once touching and heart-rending. It’s like being reunited with an old friend that seems to have gone off the rails (but that is driving a flashier car than you). Looking at China through their eyes, I at once see them staring in wonder at the history and the stories, in mild shock at the pace of development compared to Taiwan, and in disbelief at the chaos that is ensuing.
So, I installed Nikki into the local scene for a few days. Hooking up with Gerhard and the crew, we rattled around the bars, restaurants and night-life that makes Shanghai, Shanghai. We saw the sites, and while I was working for a couple of days, she had time to get to grips with the city. I think she enjoyed it, but one or two excessive nights (I blame Oktoberfest) brought home the fact that while Shanghai is a great place to visit, it’s not the best place for your health.
Jump!
Admiring The Bund
Nathan Road lights
In the French Concession with one of the many groups of newly-weds getting photographed
Wide-angle Shanghai action
Inevitable consequences
A trip to the more sedate city of Hangzhou (if 8,000,000+ people can be called sedate) was just what I needed. I had been there before, but it was obviously Nikki’s first time. My previous experience on the Kunshan rail system had obviously spoiled me; just turn up, buy your tickets and you are done. We had to wait in line for what felt like an eternity, only to be told that the ‘fast’ trains were fully booked; I should have just got the hotel to book it for me (in fact, that makes so much more sense than going to the station myself to get tickets). Three hours on a stinky, slow, packed train, quickly became three and a half hours, and we were beginning to wonder if everything was okay when suddenly everyone alighted. We had clearly arrived. Not quite recognising the station from my previous trip, we made a beeline for the taxi rank, and virtually had to shout at the drivers to persuade them to take us to the hotel. How can they be so stupid?
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Almost, but not quite.
Well, it perhaps turns out that we were stupid. Somehow, we had ended up at Hangzhou South Railway Station. It actually displays ‘Xiaoshan’ Station, so you can imagine the confusion trying to work out where we were, and profuse apologies to the taxi driver as he drove us the 45 minutes it took to get to our hotel. A little research goes a long way, Jonathan, especially when it is late at night in a dark corner of Zhejiang Province. Ironically, the high-speed rail service between Shanghai and Hangzhou opened only days later, shortening the journey to a mere 45 minutes. No matter, on the way home we got the hotel to buy the tickets, and it took us about an hour and half on the train that I originally wanted to take.
Shanghai South Railway Station roof
Boarding the slow train
Watching the world go by
Spirits remained high!
Sun setting …
Waiting some more, and contemplating life
Confidential doodling
Are we there yet?
No really … are we there yet?
Onto the design awards! The V13 has been a big success for the team, and has been steadily picking up design awards along the way; G-Mark, Red Dot and an iF China ain’t bad. Oh, and the fact that it’s been selling at 300% over original projections. It was a nice opportunity to bump into a couple of colleagues from Asus, make some new friends at Philips and have a chin wag with the bosses at the iF organisation.
Yay!
What was even more interesting was to bump into a few designers from the local Hangzhou design scene; it’s no surprise that it exists, and it sounds like they are in the same position as Taipei was perhaps ten years ago; quantity trumps quality, and intense price competition makes for compromised solutions. But they are making strides, and I would say Hangzhou would be a great location for a design centre; the culture, the considered pace, and the proximity to nature makes for a more creative feeling. Perhaps Hangzhou is to Chicago what Shanghai is to New York. Something to keep an eye on.
Hangzhou as a location? I have to say I am quite smitten with it, with Xihu Lake forming the centre-piece for the city. I suppose I was a little carried away with the image of China, so I was a little disappointed when Nikki said ‘well it just looks like Lake Constance‘ … looking at the pictures now (though I have never been), I can see what she means! Probably the same number of Chinese tourists as well.
No matter, we had a thoroughly pleasant day meandering along the lake shore, and taking in a few cafes and tea rooms in the setting sun. Magic. With the light fading, we headed for the aforementioned train back to Shanghai, and the amusements awaiting us.
I hope it was a good introduction!
Nationalism from an early age
There is an entire sub-class of my photography that includes monks carrying high-tech equipment.
Peeping Tom
Mountains in the distance … there must be good mountain biking around here!
Flag-waving.
Watching the world go by.
Hangzhou locals
Oh what book are you reading?!
Tea time.
Okay, put the book away – we get the picture!
Congratulations to Michael & Tanja! Newest Mum & Dad in Hong Kong!
Massively proud, and delighted to be able to drop-in on you before the big day … but not the most punctual baby in the world, might I add?
See all of you soon!
There is probably a rule about pregnant ladies not being allowed ice-cream.
Michael practices photography on some other babies.
WAS THAT IT?! Ready?! EMEGENCY!! What? Oh okay. My nerves were on-edge, as I imagined myself helping rush Tanja to the hospital with Michael.
Rules about giving up seats to those in need simply do not apply in Hong Kong. I am positive someone would give up their seat if challenged, but it’s not really good enough, is it?
Kunshan station at sunset. Along with the track hardware, the stations are impressive in their design intent.
Beyond the Expo, the biggest impact to my China experience on this trip was the incredible improvements in the transport infrastructure, and in particular, the trains. Most of our suppliers are located in the Yangtze River Delta region; an unimaginably dull expanse of land stretching west of Shanghai for several hundred kilometres. Just imagine The Fens in East Anglia, but many hundreds of times larger, and packed with factories relocated from Taiwan.
Getting around usually means relying on suppliers to send cars out to your hotel; the distances involved and the vagaries of travel in China leave you with little choice. This does rather put you at the mercy of your vendors, though, and usually results in unwelcome round-table lunches and forced conversation, invariably discussing positive aspects of life in England, shortcomings of life in Taiwan, and which local Chinese town has the most famous foodstuffs. Any way to prise this control away, and return the day to me is most welcome. For this reason, the new rail networks being installed throughout China are a breath of fresh air, and offer as formative a change to my life as the Taiwan High Speed Rail. It really opens up the area to exploration, allows increased connection to local travelers, and means I no longer need to stay so close to the vendors in Kunshan; a town of few features beyond the walls of the Swissotel.
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The Chinese high-speed rail network is expanding at an exasperating pace; the Beijing-Shanghai line was started in April 2008, and will be completed in Summer 2011, with trains operating at 380 kmh (240 mph). Britain, I am embarrassed to write, has plans for high-speed lines to be completed in 2025, operating at a meagre 250 kmh (155 mph). Our peak speed, Eurostar excepted, has not increased since the Mallard in 1938, when it set a record of 125 mph. Does anyone in Whitehall understand what is going on here? China is going to blow us into the weeds, at a rate that we cannot even begin to comprehend. Britain, time to wake up.
But this isn’t about the British Rail, this is about the newly completed Shanghai-Nanjing Huning Line. Opened in July this year, it connects the major cities along the Yangtze; Shanghai-Kunshan-Suzhou-Wuxi-Nanjing, and several other cities you have never heard of before with populations over 4 million people. But know these city names; they will enter common parlance as the reach of China extends.
I still remember my first trip to Shanghai in 2006; at the weekend, I turned up at the train station wishing to buy tickets to go to Suzhou. Huge queue, wall of people, unhelpful staff, crap Chinese, no dice. Defeat. Several more trips, and late nights, friends and all manner of distractions mean that I still don’t manage to escape. Yes, I manage to make it to Hangzhou with Anke and Lars – but nothing under my own steam, as it were. That is why, turning up to the station, facing the automated touch screens, punching in the coordinates, and receiving those tickets felt so good; I was finally free of the shackles. Kunshan? 17 minutes. Suzhou? 24 minutes, sir. Nanjing, over 300 km away, is dispatched in a mere hour and ten minutes. All your stations are belong to us.
The stations match the track hardware in intent, matching or exceeding the architecture in Taiwan, and certainly better than the great majority of stations in the UK (though they ain’t no St. Pancras). On that note, it was also amusing that at every opportunity China Rail made a point of including Taiwan on their network maps; cheeky, eh? You can see the map here.
With internet ticket sales apparently around the corner, these new tracks really open up this corner of China to exploration; something I really look forward to in subsequent trips. Here are some photos of my first adventures.
Kids hang outside Kunshan station on their rides
Enjoying the sunlight
Fading light
Symmetry
One of the regional trains.
… and the more Shinkansen-ish high-speed trains.
Transport cops on alert during Expo – all stations had x-ray detectors.
End of the line in Nanjing.
Threads on display outside the station.
The Chinese ability to make pointlessly large displays of flowers is unmatched.
View from near the station over to Nanjing downtown.
… and venturing further away … workpeople at rest.
Novelty petrol stations on the route to one of our vendors.
Amusing views from the car.
Team photos – a common sight.
… but no matter how good the transport system, with 1.3 billion people wanting to travel some people are going to have to wait. And wait they do, for painfully long periods of time.
Shanghai is a huge, vibrant, emergent city that has had the world’s gaze upon it for at least the last five years. I might argue, however, that there has not been a any cultural development coming out of the city that has really influenced the rest of the world; and ‘modern Chinese style’ doesn’t count – I think it just as likely that this fad is being spun by foreign design agencies eyeing Shanghai. No, there is not yet a Harajuku, Carnaby Street or South Compton that is setting the world’s imagination alight, and no youth culture, musical or style trends that have had any meaningful effect outside of China.
But that is not to say it won’t happen.
This trip, far more than any previous visit, I was struck by the sophistication of the young people on the trains, buses, and on the street. They were dressing more cohesively, colouring their hair, flaunting their iPods and demonstrating the embers of individuality that a large city like Shanghai should be driving. The general manner of people (ie: selfish and rude) also suggests to me a capacity for individualistic, independent thought; probably more-so than what I see in Taiwan. I could be entirely wrong about that though; who knows what a Quasi-Communist education does to you.
But no, this trip I saw people dressed in some tasteful clothes, expressively vulgar clothes, and a whole host of trying their best to piece together a ‘look’. It will be interesting to see how this evolves since the media is so restricted.
A local lad stands proudly, showing off his purple mane.
The other thing I couldn’t help noticing were the number of Sony PSPs and Nintendo DSs on display during underground train rides. It’s perfectly possible that these were fakes, and simple movie players instead of bona-fide games units, but it was interesting none the less. What I found more surprising were the sheer number of female players; clearly the macho game scene of the west is translated a bit differently here.
Indeed, on my last day, I came across a Nintendo demonstration area in the mall beneath the hotel. A hoard of girls were demonstrating the things you could do with the DS to a delighted crowd of females and children; boyfriends and fathers in tow. There were tables showing-off make-up games, cameras and games … I have heard of female purchasers being persuaded by tangible benefits rather than brutal features, and it was interesting to see this demonstrated.
Make-up apps. Isn’t it funny that I now say ‘app’.
Other stands welcoming a stream of visitors.
But this is still China, and demonstrations of wealth still rule the school. Ferraris and Porsches were everywhere, and there were as many Bentleys and Rolls Royces as you could shake a stick at. Best of all was this modified Buick (a premium brand in China, bizarrely!) … smooth.
Gin & Juice
But as I have said before, I maintain that what makes Beijing cool is the Chinese (the rock music, the art …), what drives Shanghai are the foreigners. Tony and Kelly took me to a British-style gastropub called The Waterhouse. Serving hearty, modern food in a distressed warehouse atmosphere, it offered the perfect vantage point for looking out at Pudong and the amazing developments happening there.
New York’s scene is, by definition, driven by immigrants and foreigners. And maybe Shanghai’s will be in a generation’s time, blurring the line between what ‘foreign’ and domestic Chinese trends mean.
View from The Waterhouse restaurant roof bar (avoid the cocktails, though).
There is little that is more depressing than considering the slow, lingering death of the British car industry, but in China at least, the heart of British industry beats strong. In a complex turn of events, both Rover and MG were bought by SAIC, and for reasons I cannot quite fathom they changed the name of Rover to ‘Roewe‘.
I have been chatting to taxi drivers and other people during this trip, and it seems that many people consider the brands to be British, and they do seem to actually be respected. It’s odd just how much resonance the ‘noble and rich’ side of British aristocracy carries here, with all the glitz and trimmings. Perhaps that will be what the UK becomes; a showroom for Chinese automobiles.
The Roewe 750 … rather like the Rover 75
MG – alive and kicking in Shanghai
Interesing that they spell out the whole ‘Morris Garages’ nomenclature … I doubt many people in the UK know it means that. With so many Chinese companies shortening their names to TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), like HTC, KHS and DEM, perhaps it makes sense to spell out its ‘Englishness’.
Yes, it really says that.
