Shanghai is a modern city

We've all been "Shanghai'd"! No, we haven't been thrown in a burlap bag and kidnapped as often happened in the early rough days of this busy port city (and thus how the idiom originated), but driving in to the city tonight, we have been struck with awe at the sheer size and spectacle of the current-day Shanghai. Boasting 18 million people by night and a few million more in the daytime, Shanghai covers 5 times the area of Los Angeles with more people than live in New York -- not the city of New York, but the state of New York!

With so much of the growth coming in the last 10 years, Shanghai is a very modern city, almost futuristic in its look as you travel on a labyrinth of freeways 4 decks high and look eye-to-eye with the 10th story of some apartment building. It was as if we were in a science fiction car-of-the-future commercial flying through some blend of Times Square and the Emerald City. Speaking of apartment (and other) buildings, Shanghai has over 2,000 buildings that are at least 20 stories tall, and the architecture and lighting of many of the skyscrapers is beautiful and dramatic... and it goes on forever. We can't wait to get out in it tomorrow.

We spent most of today in Hangzhou, where we visited the Ling-Yin Temple, site of the largest Great Buddha sculpture in the world, with its beautiful and peaceful gardens plus 500 statues of secondary Buddhas (there's rankings, just like the military) and more than 300 other Buddhas carved out of the rock formations in the garden. The second biggest statue is of the Laughing Buddha, the jolly chubby guy that many people identify as Buddha, but who's really only a secondary Buddha. The Temple and gardens were teeming with Chinese tourists, which makes us all wonder on a crisp March day what the crowds will be like when millions more visit China next summer around the Olympics.

Around Hangzhou and on the 3 hour trip to Shanghai, we noted that the traffic lights and signage were equal to -- or better than -- what we have at home. The signage is all in Chinese’s characters and in English on a green background (we could be in California), and many have electronic lighting as well. Many traffic lights have the same second-countdown electronic lights that we have at downtown SLO intersections for pedestrians, but they are larger and for the cars, which we all agreed is a good idea. The "Walk" signs for pedestrians have an animated pedestrian moving his legs just in case you don't quite get the message. That's one advantage of growing so large so recently -- they get to start with state-of-the-art equipment.

Our guide has explained to us how most phrases have multiple meanings depending on the inflection you put on it. The same phrase can mean "Hello" or "How are you?" or "Are you okay?" or "Great to see you" depending on how you say it. We don't quite understand how that works with the written word (or character), but it works for them.

Except for the Chinese characters on signs, billboards, and buildings, and the inescapable observation that everyone is Chinese, what you see in much of China could be anywhere in the West. They dress like we do, they interact like we do, and their surroundings could be matched somewhere in the US. It's not the Communist China that I imagined based on prior experiences in Communist countries -- they're not despondent, they're not somber. China is very, very full of vitality.

Bob Wacker (& Dave Garth)