Arrival in Shanghai

September 01, 2015

Toll gate leaving Shanghai Pudong International Airport
Toll gate leaving Shanghai Pudong International Airport

Hi all! I have decided to blog-in-haste about my experiences in China. Some of these postings may only be pictures, or very hasty impressions (with typos, alas), because I need to get up to speed with teaching here at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou.

The first thing I need to say is that this is a lot less exotic than it might seem. I have often argued against the exoticization of Afghanistan. Here in China, even more so. There are differences, which are fun; but I imagine this is like being hired to teach in Germany or some other developed country where I don’t know the language. Arriving at Shanghai-Pudong international airport, I felt like alot of what I encountered was a mashup of prior experiences.

In the photo above, we are about to go through the electronic fare-collection gate, which seems to work exactly the same way as FasTrack in the Bay Area and similar systems in Chicago and New York. I was picked up by a driver from the Human Resources Dept of XJTLU. He was driving a white Buick minivan. Yep, a Buick.

Middle-class housing along highway south of Shanghai
Middle-class housing along highway south of Shanghai

We did not pass through central Shanghai. I think we passed south of the downtown on a belt highway. Suzhou is due west of Shanghai, I think about 80 km. In the photo above I managed to catch some of the character of the landscape along the highway: intensive small-plot gardens (“truck farms” was the old U.S. term for these) and middle-class housing. The housing sometimes clusters in rows along the streets with plots behind. My guess is that this is single-family housing, but I am not sure of family-structure in this area at this time.

Sun through haze at 6:00 pm, with housing on the horizon
Sun through haze at 6:00 pm, with housing on the horizon

The air is thick here on the Chinese seacoast. This is not even pollution; or mostly it is not. It is humidity. Like New York in August, the air has a pea-soup quality. At 6 pm I could look directly at the sun, as this photo indicates.

Bridge, power plant, colling towers
Bridge, power plant, cooling towers

In the U.S. these big cooling-tower structures are generally associated only with nuclear power plants and a bit of anxiety. In most parts of the world (including the UK) they are a standard part of any power-plant. As we approach this bridge you get a sense of the intense degree of industrialization and development here. I only got a glance (and no photo) of the river below, and it was busy like Rotterdam.

Sun through steam and bridge cables
Sun through steam and bridge cables

Like the eastern span of the Bay Bridge (and the Brooklyn Bridge), suspension-cables radiate out from the tower- tops on this bridge.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top