The Greatest Story on Earth: Journey Into China: Kahului-Honolulu-Vancouver-Shanghai

Wednesday, December 3rd- Friday, December 5th

I took this photo: Looking down East Nanjing Lu to the Oriental Pearl Tower.

Flying from Kahului to Shanghai isn’t necessarily fast.  My route takes 28 hours, Kahului-Honolulu-Vancouver-Shanghai.  Fortunately I am a happy traveler, more than content to sit in small, air-conditioned spaces with blankets while genteel ladies deliver food and drinks for tens of hours, as long as I have a book (Jonathan Fenby’s “Tiger Head Snake Tails,” a one stop contemporary synopsis of China) to engage my mind.  

I sleep to Canada, share breakfast in the airport concourse with my dear friend and North Shore Oahu compatriot Robb Harding, and then board my 14 hour journey to Shanghai on China Eastern Airlines.  My seat neighbor is Summer (“you know, the season!”), a Chinese exchange student studying in University on Vancouver island who is returning returning home for Christmas break.  Sitting for so long is tiring, but the food is savory, the service attentive, and my excitement palpable.  I drift in and out of sleep, awakening for meals and reading, before drifting away again.

We take the Northern Arc through British Colombia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and Siberia.  My curiosity to observe the landscape is immense, but my aisle seat inhibits my access to the window shade, and indeed the glare of the winter Arctic sun reflecting off of snow and sea is blinding.  Further, the Chinese passengers are utterly absorbed in their ultra-modern entertainment consoles, and the interactive plane maps are more compelling to virtually everyone than the scenery outside.  The one time I open the shade I am quickly reprimanded by the air host.

We cut through Heilongjiang, swoop northwest of North Korea, and then make a beeline south.  I peak out the window to see the Northern Peninsula of Dalian, a city surrounded by water, and I see the white sand beaches curving away from the industrial peninsula.  We cut across the Yellow Sea and around the Shandong Peninsula, famed home of the mythical Yellow Emperor, from whom all Han Chinese claim descent.  Shandong was also the home of storied Chinese philosopher Confucius (or “Kongze”).  I strain to see the old German Concession city of Qingdao, (modern home of Tsingtao Beer), but fail.  We cut back out to sea so that we can approach Shanghai from the East.

I doubt there’s a city on Earth that makes its impression felt in the surrounding sea and sky as much as Shanghai.  From six miles above and two hundred miles away, the city begins to make its presence known.  The air changes color from clear blue to hazy.  The water transform from deep blue to a ruddy, silty brown, the effect of mixing with the third largest river in the world, the 4,000 mile Yangtze River.  Container ships  appear, first one at a time, then three at a time, then in lines and clusters, waiting to enter or exit the busiest port on Planet Earth.  Windmills pop up in the middle of the ocean, built on concrete buoys, striving to harness wind power to fuel the relentless energy needs of the factory of the world.

All these buildings were erected in the last 30 years: Get ready, world.  China is on the move. . .

We descend into Pudong, the once rural, agrarian peninsula east of old Shangai that has been transformed more dramatically than any piece of land on the planet in the last thirty years, giving rise in one generation to a cityscape comparable to downtown Manhattan.  Wheels hit the ground; my heart leaps.  I’m here.

I kick my legs into action after untold hours of stasis.  As  I’m highly allergic to dry, oxygen-deprived cabin air, I sneeze my way uncontrollably through customs.  My tourist visa is approved by the cordial customs officer, and I am the fortunate recipient of a ten year visa!  Since my main man President Obama visited Chinese Communist Party Chairman and Prime Minister Xi Jinping a month ago, new visa exchanges have been arranged to facilitate travel and cultural exchange, and I am one of the first beneficiaries.  May that encourage many future sojourns to the Middle Kingdom.

Sleek and modern Pudong International airport is a pleasure to move through.  I retrieve my luggage, exchange my greenbacks for renminbi, or yuan, or Mao dollars (take your pick), and slide over to the Maglev.  The German-designed magnetic levitating train is a triumph of modern engineering, hurtling from the airport into the city at speeds reaching 440  km/h (270 mph).  The Maglev is a fitting metaphor for the speed at which China is hurtling itself forward from an agrarian recent past (1972) to a hyper-industrialized future.  Face pressed to the glass as the train roars on, I see high-rises, cranes, tilled fields, a church, canals, and the distant skyline of Shanghai.

I unload at the Maglev station, walk across the boardwalk through a shopping atrium to the metro, and purchase my ticket for East Nanjing Lu, the central pedestrian commercial thoroughfare running through the heart of old Shanghai.  The metro is packed to the brim as I cart along my two rollaways, one full of school brochures and materials, the other with cold weather gear and business attire.  The metro crowd is quiet, civil, organized, respectful, and mostly absorbed in myriad mobile machines that stream movies, songs, books, and shows.  As we flood out the metro and up the escalator, I marvel as adults watch shows on iPads while navigating crowds.  Tech addiction is global. . .

I arise out of the bowels of the city after the early winter sunset (5:30) has plunged the city into frigid darkness.  I’m in the middle of the Chinese Times Square, or Shinjuku, or the West End, or any international metropolitan commercial mecca you please.  I don’t have a taxi or mobile phone access so I triangulate that if the Huangpu River is East, then I should walk west and south to find Jiujiang Lu.  I do so, and I am surprised that it works.  Fifteen minutes of walking delivers me to the Majesty Shanghai Plaza.  Tired, cold, and content, I am greeted by a bellman with white gloves.  He opens the glass doors into a majestic lobby of marble, gold-covered sculptures, French impressionist paintings, and a soaring Christmas tree.  I had heard tell of the glitz and class of Shanghai; now here I am in the midst of it.

I sneeze my way through check-in, and retire to the private comfort of my hotel room, replete with a writing desk, a flat-screen tv, and a view of a multi-colored LED hotel sign out the window.   I had left my home in West Maui with my wife on Wednesday afternoon, and it is now Friday night.  Private comfort is most welcome.

After showering, unpacking, and sneezing a lot, the phone rings.  “Hello, Andrew?  This is Stephen.  We are waiting for you in the lobby.  It’s time for dinner.”  Yes. . . . 

Steven Hong is one of the nine employees of Educatius in China.  Educatius is an international student recruitment agency with offices in Shanghai and Boston, and a presence from California to Europe, wherever boarding schools and boarding students may be found.  My school, Maui Preparatory Academy, is represented by this ten year old company.

Steven, a sharp, bespectacled, efficient, bilingual Chinese gentlemen, delivers me to a private dining room on the second floor.  There I walk in upon ten people enjoying a feast around a round table with a lazy susan abundant with dishes.  I enter the room awkwardly with a sneeze, feeling badly about arriving late, but c’est la vie.

My dinner companions are the following:   Emma Hansson, a Swedish woman and a China veteran of 10 years who had lived in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai.  She is basically the country manager for Educatius; Andreas Beyer, Ewan McGregor’s doppelgänger, the international Director of Educatius marketing, and a whip-smart, acerbic, and cheerful Swede; Stella, a Singaporean woman raised in Shanghai who studied in New Jersey and now represents schools from her base in Florida; Mike, a stately Christian gentleman in charge of a religious school in Rochester, NY; Jane, an educator, maternal mother of four and wife of the Headmaster at her rustic Connecticut campus; Shannon, a congenial school administrator based in Virginia; and Mr. Tubbs, a clean-cut Christian American gentleman with an easy likability and a jubilant demeanor when addressing a crowd. 

Of course I would learn these details later.  For the moment my mission is to do one of the best activities you can do in China: feast!  I dive in.  Shrimp soup in a pumpkin, mushrooms, Peking Duck with Hoisin sauce, dumplings, fifteen other dishes.  The craic is good, and the food is better.  At dinner’s end (i.e. when I finish eating, as all the others finish long before), we receive our itinerary for the week and retire to our rooms.

But I can’t stay in.  I am simply too excited, and too creaky after sitting so long on the plane.  I wrap myself in fleece, beanies, and three jackets, and swim into the city.

Friday night in Shanghai is electric.  Street hawkers fly rip-off multicopters over mini trains full of children and parents; snack and dessert shops overflow with couples, teenagers, and revelers.  All stores are open, music wafts out of shop windows, and young shop girls sing into microphones to sell their wares.

China's Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Gateway to the World: The Bund.

Head buried into my shoulders, my cool breath frosting in front of me, I scurry forth to the heart of the city, the Bund.  The Bund is a promenade lining Shanghai’s waterfront where Europeans set up their customs houses, administration buildings, and social clubs.  This one mile stretch contains a representative collection of historical and cultural architectural styles from Germany, Britain, France, the United States, Italy, Portugal, and really any imperial power that projected itself over the sea.  The buildings stand together in a row facing the Huangpu, the working river that floats the world to Shanghai and Shanghai to the world. Facing back across the river is Pudong, the historically abandoned farmland that has been transformed beyond all recognition into the most futuristic collection of new skyscrapers on the planet.  As the architectural history of Europe faces off against the architectural future of the world, Shanghai’s Bund personifies China’s transformation from the past to the present.

At night the Bund is a vision.  The Chinese aren’t shy about LED illumination, and they decorate a hundred buildings with an explosion of scintillating, video-game-like, Times-Square style lighting.  Thousands of Chinese flock to the waterfront Bund to take in the endless light show, as pleasure boats and container ships cruise by.  Smiling couples, tourists, and throngs of friends enjoy the scene, as police officers and street cleaners keep the whole urban agglomeration safe and tidy.

I say goodnight to the Bund, to Shanghai, to China, and return to the Majesty Plaza for a deep sleep.