I BOW MY HEAD TO THE
CHINESE
I bow my head to the
Chinese….and this is the only way I can start this blog.
In my youth, mid life and
more recent impression of China was that of a ‘closed’ state, with limited
access to the outside world. I had read and
heard about Mao, the Communist party, Tiananmen Square protests, and wondered
in awe about the great wall, the Forbidden City, and the terracotta warriors,
but always with fascination and a great desire to visit this great country. The desire was even greater when few months
back I went to watch the latest Bond flick ‘Skyfall’ and the opening scene of
Shanghai had me gaping in wonder. So
Shanghai was immediately added to my bucket list.
As luck would have had it,
when the opportunity to visit Shanghai and Ningbo on a business trip came up, I
grabbed it with both hands and on 25th March 2013, left for this
wonderful country along with my Kuwaiti colleague, Fahad.
Visas
Securing a visa to China
is relatively easy and I got mine in 3 days.
The consulate is located in Yarmouk (Block 5, St 3) and open from 9:00am
to 12:000 and again from 1:00pm to 3:00pm.
The visa application form is available on line http://kw.chineseembassy.org/eng/ and easy to fill. For the first time visitor, the visa is valid
for a single entry and up to 3 months.
However, if you are traveling a second time, you can apply for the
multiple entries ‘1 year visa’ at a slightly higher fee.
Flights to Shanghai
Various airline choices
are available from Kuwait, but we decided to stick to Emirates as they had the
most convenient flight schedules and connections. We had also decided to spend a day in Hong
Kong on our return journey and Emirates Airlines had the perfect connections
without having to spend too much time in transit at Dubai airport.
Shanghai – a few thoughts
and tidbits
The time difference
between Kuwait and Shanghai is + 5 hours, so after a pleasant journey by the
Emirates Boeing 777ER, we landed at Shanghai’s huge airport. I wouldn’t say it’s fancy like Dubai, but
it’s practical. The people at
immigration were stern but efficient and there were little butterflies inside
my stomach, but after the usual questions of ‘Why are you visiting China’
‘Where are you staying’ and ‘How long will you be staying’ we
exited through custom without a hitch although my colleague had to open his
hand bag and part with the oranges, apples and bananas his little daughter had
packed in his hand bag without his knowledge, assuming her dad would face great
difficulty for food in China.
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| Beautiful streets of Shanghai |
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| The Bund in the evening |
Our trading partners had
arranged a private ‘black’ taxi for us and the Chinese driver who picked us up
hardly spoke a word of English. This is
the first thing that hits you about China, literally nobody speaks English... Luckily
for us, our business partner provided us with one of their staff, Mr. Pi who
acted as our guide and translator during the few days we spent in
Shanghai. Pi was such a pleasant
company, but more importantly, he filled
us in on a lot of Chinese culture and their way of life and at the same time
was very inquisitive to know more about the Muslim way of life, how rich the Arabs
are, etc etc..
When I told him that I was
Indian, he proudly told me that he has watched quite a few Indian films and his
favorite being ‘Three Idiots’. He said
most Chinese loved Sharman Joshi’s role as the poor boy studying to get his
family out of poverty.
Hotels in Shanghai range
from expensive to cheap and on the recommendations of our contacts in China; we
decided to stay at the 4 star ‘Royal Court Hotel’ www.royalcourthotel.com.cn which is situated on the Huaihai Road and close
to the main shopping and commercial areas.
When we arrived at the hotel, I was quite disappointed as it looked
small and had a tiny reception area. So when I told the receptionist that I
would prefer to see the room before paying the advance, he very confidently
blurted out ‘You like room sir’ , something
about the way he said it gave me the confidence to skip checking out the room
and after the usual check-in formalities, we took the lift to our rooms on the
6th floor.
Imagine my surprise to
find that our rooms were actually service apartment style rooms with fantastic
wooden Chinese style décor, central heating and extremely large. The room also had a kitchen area, office desk
and a computer, sitting room area and an inviting bed…and all this for USD.85/-
Although the hotel looks tiny on the outside and is hidden from the main road,
I would recommend it to anyone traveling to Shanghai with a moderate
budget.
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| The Bund at night |
End March, Shanghai was
cold. Although the temperature hovered
around 12 degrees centigrade during the afternoon, it went down below 7 degrees
late evenings. Our first day in Shanghai
was spent visiting the popular landmarks like the Yuyuan Garden which is a famous garden located in
the heart of Shanghai. The garden
features great rocks, various kinds of trees, bamboo, Jade rock, and even a
goldfish pond. There is an admission fee
to enter this garden. We also visited
the ‘Bund’ which is actually a marina with really fancy looking
buildings on either side of the Huanpu River.
This is a must visit place as it will give you an idea of the great
progress China has made.
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| Yuyuan Garden |
Shanghai is a very clean
city and everything is orderly. For
transportation, most people use the subway or the bus. Taxis are also available and quite a few of
the taxis have women drivers. We were
fortunate to use the subway, and I must say what is so amazing is that a train arrives every two minutes and people
get in and out such a orderly manner that it was embarrassingly too nice. Even though hundreds of thousands of Chinese
use the subway daily to commute to work, everything is done is systematically.
Early the next morning we took the fast train to
Ningbo (Industrial province located about 3 hours away by train) and this was
one amazing journey I will never forget.
When we arrived at the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, it looked more
like an airport and I believe it is the largest railway station in Asia. It looked every bit that and just 10 minutes
before departure, we had to go to the boarding gate (just like an aircraft),
and the train arrived and left exactly on time.
The train we took was a fast one (touching 200 km per hour), although I
understand there are faster trains, but my Kuwaiti colleague who had never
traveled long distance by train before was a little concerned and so we decided
to use the slower one. On board, beer,
cold drinks, snacks and food is served just like in the aircraft (at a charge
of course) by pretty hostesses and the journey was extremely pleased. We passed some amazing countryside dotted
with storied farm houses, which our Chinese friend explained belonged to farming
clans. There may be poor people in
China, but it never shows and seeing baggers in the streets slums, etc is out
of the question.
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| Using the sub-way |
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| At the train Station |
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| On our way to Ningbo - beautiful country side |
In China nobody wastes
electricity. People try and refrain from
using lights when not required and many houses we noticed have large windows to
ensure enough sunlight enters the house during the day. When my friend wanted to exchange money at
the bank, we found that one of the door was permanently closed with a note
saying, use other door to save energy. This
we noticed in quite a few places. That along with the solar heaters on every
roof top were some of the energy saving ideas we noticed in Shanghai.
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| Everyone has one - solar heating One of the things I like to do when I travel overseas is try the local cuisine and in Shanghai we had the opportunity to try real authentic Chinese food. Food is not cheap especially in the more fancy restaurants and we did try Chinese, Indian, and Turkesh restaurants. I have written a separate blog on our bad experience at the Tandoor Restaurant and you can check it out in this blog site. |
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| Nice authentic Chinese food |
While stepping into our
China Eastern Airline onwards to Hong Kong, I could not but help thinking how
much progress this country had made and wondered if our own Country (India)
could ever emulate them. I wonder!!!!
Julio Cardoso
Kuwait
