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February 27, 2005
Shanghai Nights
ot into Shanghai Saturday afternoon. The hotel Internet connection is plagued with problems, so I haven't been able to get online until visiting the corporate office. This may be my only chance to post before returning later in the week, so here's a rundown.
We arrived, checked in, and went right to Yu Gardens to shop. Bought a bunch of cashmere scarves for gifts, and a travel case to schlep them back in. We had the usual fun haggling prices down t 1/3 the original offered.
Oh, and I bought my wife a couple of watches. Hope they last more than a month.
Then we went to the Grand Hyatt for dinner. This is the tallest building in Shanghai offering spectaculat views of the Oriental Pearl Radio Tower, the Bund, and all the buildings in the new area of Pudong. (You can see some of the pictures if you go here.)
We ate sushi in a Japanese restaurant on the 56th floor, which also has an interior gallery where you can look up a 100-foot diameter central core that goes up another 40-50 stories with views of room halls that reminds me of the circular Galactic Senate in Star Wars. Awe-inspiring and a little dizzying.
My compatriots put away champaigne, beer, wine, scotch, and three bottles of cold saki. I don't drink, so I kept up with my San Pellegrino. We laughed for over 2 hours and probably upset the neighbors. But only two of us were Americans (one Korean, one Japanese, and one Taiwanese), so we may have dodge a cultural bullet.
Sunday we went to the first half of the Peking Opera doing Mu Guiying Takes Command. Here's a synopses: She Taijun, widow of a famous general of the Song Dynasty can not sit idle when she learns that the Western Xia regime has invaded the Song Empire. She sends her great-grandchildren Yang Wenguang and Yang Jinhua to the capital city for information. There they break into the martial arts competition arena and kill Wang Kun, the son of the defense minister who wants to take command of the Song troops in order that his family may usurp the power of the empire. The emperor then learns that they are descendants of the Yang family and agrees to put their mother, Mu Guiying, in command of the troops. She is reluctant to take command because she knows that the emperor is a capricious person. Widow She, however, persuades her daughter-in-law to take command, putting aside her private resentment in order to save the country.
It was everything we thought Chinese Opera would be. But 90 minutes of a 3-hour opera was enough. Some of the vocals were remarkably piercing and sinus cleansing. The lead actor (all the female parts are male actors, trained from the age of 5 to be women; I know, interesting...) won many applause lines for his/her ability to do a kind of chrysanthemum unflowing of the hands. I only heard about this after, so I missed out on the reason for the applause.
Today and the next two days is work work work. I'll check back in if I can. Got an org assessment to do.
Cheers
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Posted by witnit at February 27, 2005 5:26 PM
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