Photos and Impressions of Puxi, Shanghai

17th September 2007

posted in disruptive-technology, travel |

Well, my Shanghai wifi connection seems to be a bit faster and the Flickr uploader finally worked, although I had to upload these images from today in two batches. Here are a few highlights:

This Citibank ATM machine worked like a charm today. How amazing is it to use a foreign ATM halfway around the world, put in my PIN, take out Chinese currency, and then get a receipt which also tells me how much money in Chinese Yuan we still have in that account?! The world is flat.

The reality of our flat world was also confirmed this evening as I was blogging and received a Skype IM and then Skype audio call from Diana Laufenberg, a teacher at Mount Elden Middle School in Flagstaff, Arizona. She had read about the poor air quality in Shanghai on Will Richardson’s blog, and thought she’d skype me (since I was online and available) to get a firsthand report for her students. How cool is THAT?! Alan November would be proud… Diana is certainly making her “classroom a global communications center” as Alan encourages!

On a lighter and unrelated note, it was cool to see Christopher Paolini’s book “Eldest” in Chinese today:

We’ve been looking for children’s picture books that have both Chinese and English translations, but so far have not had any luck.

The main western restaurants we’re seeing in Shanghai are McDonalds and KFC, but today we also saw (and enjoyed coffee at) Starbucks!

Needless to say, we have NOT eaten at either of these western fast food joints… Jeff has taken us to some wonderful Shanghai restaurants. The highlights of tonight’s meal were excellent green beans and a delicious eel dish!

Our most surprising restaurant experiences today was having a server pour tea with this EXTREMELY long teapot!

I’ll close with this image of the technology mall we visited today– just AMAZING. NPR reports 100 new people in China are getting online every MINUTE, and undoubtedly a large number of them are coming to this very mall to purchase their custom-built PCs.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm and is filed under disruptive-technology, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On September 17th, 2007, Jennifer W said:

Thank you so much for sharing the “Personal” side of your trip. For many of us who will never get to Shanghai, it has been a pleasure to follow your trip.

Rumor is you might experience a typhoon?? Can’t wait to read about that.

Prayers for safety — regardless of the weather.
And more pictures please!!

Jennifer