Wednesday and Thursday March 18, 19th
Shanghai, China

Shanghai was a small fishing village that became China’s largest city by the mid 1800s. It was one of the first concession areas opened after the Opium Wars, allowing the British, French, and Americans to live in special territorial zones without being under Chinese laws. It became China’s first full fledged Special Economic Zones with many financial institutions, cars and large buildings. Shanghai also became the by word for exploitation and vice, with countless opium dens, gambling joints and brothels. In 1949 the Communists put their foot down and began eradicating slums, rehabilitating hundred of thousands of opium addicts and stamping out child and slave labor.
By 1990 the wheel had come full circle for Shanghai, with foreign investment once again welcome and by the mid 1990s half the worlds high-rise cranes were looming over Shanghai. On the opposite side of the river a whole new Shanghai is being created. It is hard to imagine the scale of the construction coupled with other industrial activities. We passed 20 ship yards with 4 to 8 ships under construction and three large container ports with 12 to 20 cranes.
We visited the old market surrounding the 16th-centry Yu Yuan Gardens, the Jade Buddha Temple, and enjoyed a traditional Chinese-style lunch. These people eat very healthily and you can see it in the height of the slim younger generation. The big issue here is pollution and while we were in town there was a lot. Our final stop of the day was the Children’s Palace, a comprehensive, free, after-school educational facility for gifted children to develop their skills in music, art, dance, painting and computer technology. The talent level is unreal!
The next day we visited the unique 1,500-foot, Oriental Pearl TV Tower in the new city and the Magnetic Levitation Train (Maglev) which goes from the new city to the new airport at a top speed of 260 miles per hour. This was an amazing ride and real eye opener when the opposite direction train passed.
Next stop Seoul, Korea.