[sociate] I got to Shanghai too late

Thanks to my gracious host in Shanghai, Kwek Ping Yong of Inventis (and his excellent assistants), I've had a fabulous introduction to the city, which is no longer an aspiring world capital. It's arrived.

I do wish I'd visited ten years ago, when Pudong was the Queens across the river; now it's all built up. For example, the Westin Shanghai is first-rate. Road signs throughout the city include English, right out to the burbs. The Shanghai Metro is modern, swift and easy to use. Clean, inexpensive taxis with working meters get you where you want to go (tho' it helps if someone's written your destination on a slip of paper first).

There are Starbucks all over, complete with people poring over their WiFi laptops. The malls are positively gigantic, but not full of see-them-everywhere chains. Banana? Anne?Limited? Mercifully absent.

People rave about Shanghai's architecture, but I'm not much for freestanding ego monuments, so they don't do much for me. However, the two-square-block Xin Tian Di zone is one of the best modern urban outdoor malls I've seen. It's nicer, for example, than the Fourth Street and Bay Street developments near me in Berkeley, or the Reston Town Center in suburban DC. Xin Tian Di is packed with people and better stores than you would expect. Designed by American architect Benjamin Wood, it preserves the past and has no echoes of Hong Kong's expat-ghetto Lan Kwai Fong (however, it does now have its own Flash-animated site). On the whole, the city is nicely put together, despite the encroaching forest of high-rise apartment buildings. It feels vibrant and busy.

Some small points of crankiness: Prices in the electronics Mecca of Xu Jia Hui aren't any better than US mail-order houses (thank goodness I didn't bite and comparison-shopped from my hotel). The big flea markets are full of knockoff goods you can get for almost nothing, but in a no-logo world, store after store of "Burberry," "Polo," "Hugo Boss" and "Rolex" renders the shopping taste buds numb. Nothing creative to find in them. I had heard about snazzily dressed Shanghainese, but they haven't showed up where I've been. So despite an embarrassment of clothing to be had, there isn't much interesting here. Ads for iPods are everywhere, including painted on the subway cars, but I've seen only one iPod-bearing person so far. Nobody wears sunglasses.

Apparently, Chinese people love their beer. They're not picky about it, they just like lots of it, in big bottles.

Finally, that romantic, Communist-oppressive notion that it might be dangerous to talk to local residents, that you might be under surveillance -- it seems to be history, too. You can move around at will and people are kind and warm. The Great Firewall is busy, though (hmm... as if it were listening, that link wouldn't work from here). I can't get Outlook to fetch more than a third of my messages, and the New York Times online shows up, curiously, without images.

I wish I'd learned Mandarin as a child.

The gig that brought me here was moderating a day of discussion for Wharton and Cisco with SME businessfolks, to see how they use technology (SME = small to medium-sized enterprises). It's the same gig that took me to Bangalore two months ago. Thanks, Neil and Douglas! (And if you need simultaneous translators for Mandarin Chinese, look for Rachel Liu and Christine Chen.)

Got to meet Isaac Mao today, blogger of note and part of the first native Chinese venture capital firm, United Capital Investment. He's smart, brave, peripatetic and marvelously connected, like Joi Ito is in Japan.

posted by Jerry at 11:41 PM

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