Auto-mania

Once a year Shanghai hosts Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition. This year's show was held April 22-28.

I returned from Australia last Saturday evening. I left the hotel at 4:30 A.M. that morning, which meant 2:30 A.M. China Time, and arrived safely at 7:30 P.M. It was a long flight. Loooong. Long, got it? By 8:30 I had fulfilled my belly and curled up to the couch and I was merrily snoring away. Not literally, I don't snore, of course, but I couldn't keep my eyes open for 5 seconds and fell asleep immediately. Which is perfectly understandable, if you ask me. But then, there was J., who had been waiting for me. We hadn't seen each other in three weeks. And who was not tired. But very, very disappointed. "You can home and all you are interested in is food and sleep." "Err... yes. I'm sorry. I missed you too, but I am really, really tired."

Not quite the home-coming one would wish from travelling spouse. And what's more, I had one week, before I was going to be leaving to Finland, for almost three weeks. So, I decided to try and make it up for him. I told J. that on Monday I would leave office early afternoon, and we could do something nice together. "What would you like to do?" And this is how I ended up visiting Shanghai Auto 2009.

It's not that I don't like cars, I do. I might even say I love to drive a nice, powerful, car. But I am not that exited to watch cars. And I didn't think Shanghainese were either. I was going to be wrong on one of them.

We arrived to the site, and I went to get us tickets. The queue was well organised between railings, so that the typical chaos would be prevented. The queue even went quite quickly. But when the railings ended, everyone charged towards the ticket counters, and THEN you had to fight for your right to buy the tickets. I have gained some expertise with the elbow tactics around here, so in no time I had exchanged my crispy 100 RMB bill to two tickets.

Towards the autos we headed! There was a metal detector at the door. And it beeped loudly and flashed red for every single person entering. Not that the guards were the least bit interested. Maybe someone had forgotten to mention that they are suppose to check the belongings and the entering person if the detector-machine alarms...

There were ten halls full of cars and most of all, full of Chinese. I could have done with five. Or two. Even one would have been ok. But no, ten they had. We went through everyone of them, and I think I saw between 20-30 makes I had never ever seen before. Most of those Asian makes didn't offer anything that appealed my taste. And then, some of them had, bloody hell, directly copied London Cab and Rolls Royce. Cheeky, don't you think?

At some point I started a new hobby: taking pictures of men carrying ladies handbags. There were plenty. Only problem was, that with all that crowd, taking pictures was extremely hard: either you didn't have a line to the target, the target was too close, or someone bumped into your back just when you thought you got it. And they didn't just "bump into" you. They push you. They poke you. They step on your toes. They walk in front of you just when you are taking a picture. They try to push you aside to get a better view. And you can forget about "excuse me" or it's Chinese equivalent (if there is one, so far I have never heard it used?).

What was to be expected, but was still a little funny, was that everything was only in Chinese. So much for the international exhibition then... But what was really... Chinese, if you may, was that they had own sound-systems for each stand. Imagine walking into a hall, where you can see two girls playing violin on one stand. A group of dancers dancing on the next stand. And what you can hear, is Celine Dion from a third stand, so loud, that you (or that would be I, in this case) have to press your hands against your ears, if you are to survive there for more than few seconds. Then, the stand with the violin players wants their show to be noticed and turns up the volume. And the Celine Dion stand, which by now no longer has Celine, but some other record playing, responds swiftly and gives it all they have got. Ca-co-pho-ny. I, personally, wanted to tie those idiots' heads to the speakers, so they could reconsider whether the volume might be a little too much...

So, about four hours in this place, and we were both exhausted and headed home. Would I go back? Voluntarily? No, no way. Luckily, J. wouldn't either. Maybe next year I fill my exhibition quota with China International Adult Toys and Reproductive Health Exhibition. Or maybe not.

Towering over Shanghai

Shanghai's signature tower, the one and only: Oriental Pearl Tower

Shanghai World Financial Tower opened its doors some time end of last summer, August if I am not badly mistaken. We, and about 1,000,000 other Chinese wanted to visit the place. Due to some restricting factors, like for example that I have to work on weekdays, our options have pretty much been limited to the weekends.

If we are going to go through all the trouble getting there (it is on the other side of the town), we'd decided to pick a pretty and clear day. But once it came, we were off to the Tower. Which was a great idea, but someone else had thought about that too... The queue was so long we figured it would take at least 3 or 4 hours to get in. And once in, you'd propably be squeezed between all the enthusiastic Chinese. No thanks.

Firstly, we were optimistic and decided to try a little later, figuring the first weeks are the worst.

But every time we went back, there were more people than in the Shanghai railway station just before Chinese New Year. So we figured we would have to get there really really early one Saturday morning.

There were many weeks that brough us nothing but cloudy mornings. Then there were weekends I could not get that man of mine out of the bed before it was too late.

So, by early this year we still had not visited the new tower. We'd been to the Jin Mao Tower, which is just beside the new tower, but not quite as tall, and, of course, not as new. So while Jin Mao Tower offers you views from 88th floor, is now comfortable in respect of the crowds, you can get in without queuing, no one wants to go there. Poor old Jin Mao. Actually we took my mother there when she visited, as the queu to the other tower was... longish.

In March when my friend was visiting we decided we have to get her to visit the g** d*** tower. But again, whether was not on our side. Finally we went there on one Friday evening. No queuing at all and the night views were beautiful. I warmly recommend. Taking good photos, however, is difficult, as the windows are bound to reflect...

View from the Tower.

View from the foot of the Tower.

Jin Mao Tower in front, SWFC Tower behind it

There were no queues, but there were still people there. And from what I gathered, mostly Chinese tourists. Why do I thinks so? Well, because they looked Chinese and because many of them were secretly taking photos of us. Not very well secretly, as I noticed what they were doing, but nonetheless. Couple of young men came to ask if they could take a pictures with us. And then some one else came. And then a group of girls. I started to think they took us for someone else. Like, I don't know, someone worth photoing, maybe. ("Photoing" propably doesn't qualify as a word, does it?)

I wonder what they will tell they friends about this picture? "And here we are in Shanghai with two... well, two... two westeners."