Yue’s Yappings

I wrapped up my work in Singapore on Friday evening. Next up is Shanghai, my typical resting place in Asia. My family owns an apartment in the Pudong district (the modern part of Shanghai), which makes it great stop over city for me.

After getting back to my hotel around midnight, I woke up at 4 am to catch my 6am flight to Shanghai. I flew via Malaysia airlines, since it was much cheaper than the alternatives, but got to have a short stop in Kaula Lumpur airport. It was my first time flying Malaysia airlines, and I have to say I was very impressed. Their service in the economy section was much better than any airlines in America. Similar to Singapore Airlines, every seat had a personal video system that played movies, TV, audio and had games on demand. United only offers this in First Class on international flights - good grief, they have fallen so far in recent years.

It arrived around 3 pm in Shanghai’s Pudong airport. As soon as I stepped outside, I was blasted by hot humid air. The temperature was 93 degrees, but it might as well been 125 for this Denver citizen.

I grabbed a taxi, and went to my parent’s apartment in Pudong. At 4:30 pm, after a quick fresh up, I was in the lobby of the Shangri-La hotel meeting a customer for business. Later that evening, on the way back to the apartment, I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. I found a small restaurant that served local Shanghainese food right across street from the Jinmao building - current the tallest building in Shanghai but not for much longer.

At 10 pm, I received a phone call from the head of my distributor in China, who had just arrived in Shanghai to meet me. Out the door again - this time we met at Starbucks (yes - you can’t escape them!) looking over the bundt.  I didn’t get back to apartment after midnight.

As you can tell, Chinese meet for business on any day or anytime. They don’t seem to believe in weekends and evenings.