Welcome to China!
With 24 million people, Shanghai is one of the largest cities on Earth, and China’s financial capital. (View from our room)
The city is very lively and crowded, yet there is no pushing, shouting, or soliciting. People just seem very happy.
I can’t read Chinese, but I believe this must be the entrance to China Town.
People seem to like music. They gather to dance on the street - in groups,...
... or in couples.
Morning in Shanghai
Due to a time shift problem, we get up at 5:30am. The Bund is Shanghai’s river promenade.
It allows a glimpse at the skyline of Pudong, Shanghai’s financial district across the Suzhou river.
Early in the morning, people gather to do Tai Chi with music. Background shows the world’s largest Wifi router.
Tai Chi can also be performed with scarfs...
...or with a sword. (You do not want to meet this lady at night.)
Alternatively, you can dance to refresh your senses in the morning....
...or use the open air gym. All in all, these morning activities look very healthy.
Shanghai Center
The old city center has kept some of the pre‐modern charm. Private life and public life blend seamlessly,...
...with washing, sleeping, selling, and cleaning happening inside, outside, and across the doors.
Many of the streets host a market.
Meat is sold alive...
... or dead, and in almost all intermediate stages (not in the picture).
Confucian Temple
It is 9:00 now. We visit a Confucian Temple. Confucianism is a world view with ritual, ethical, humanistic and pantheistic elements.
Confucius was a wise man who lived 500 BCE. Indeed, his smile seems to suggest he knows something that many others don’t.
Reportedly, he said that one should read 10,000 books. I like the idea of a religious leader who recommends reading more than one book.
People write their wishes on colorful cards.
The temple itself is an oasis of peace in Shanghai.
French Concession
The French Concession was “rented” to France in the 19th century. Local food options give you a strong desire...
...to go for European food. The “Paulaner Brauhaus” features German Schlager music and Chinese waiters dressed in Bavarian style.
This area has been made up to resemble a European pedestrian zone, including fountains and Italian ice cream.
In the park, people gather to sing. The singer was most likely not a professional, though, because he seemed to truly enjoy the activity.
Other people gather to play cards. Another interesting example of a
non‐alcoholic public social activity.
The silk store in the South of the city is advertised as a truly local clothing store. But if you look at the tag, you see that most clothing is actually “made in China”. Tough luck...
Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition
This is the People’s Square. Finally something communist here.
The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition simulates a flight through the city on a 360° screen that surrounds you entirely.
It also shows the entire city in miniature. We learn that China embraces English as the global lingua franca, and that every child now learns English at school. This allows them to study abroad.
My university in France also wants to attract Chinese students. However, they believe it is easier to teach 200m Chinese students French rather than teach 200 French professors English. The problem is that they might be right...
Pudong
Pudong is the financial center of the city. Note the elevated pathways for pedestrians.
The Jinmao Tower is 420 meters tall. It is shown here from the Shanghai World Financial Center, which is 490 meters tall.
It is called “financial center”, because it is one of the fastest ways to burn tourist money. In return, it is also equipped with the latest technology.
We also learn that the Yangtse River has a Saarschleife.
Trip to Hangzhou
The Shanghai metro system is very efficient and well‐organized. It also sports futuristic technology. Here: A staircase that moves automatically. Paris take note.
The train station works like an airport. Tickets are checked by a machine, like for the metro. The booth on the right leads down to the tracks and opens when the train is ready.
The trains are new and fast. Different from Europe, the doors are large and open at the level of the platform (no stairs). This is because when they built the platform, they already knew the position of the door. Clever.
The Taoist Temple in Hangzhou
Hangzhou is one of China’s premier tourist destinations. Here is a path through the bamboo forest.
We visit a Taoist temple in the jungle. Taoism has an ethical, ritual, pantheistic, and philosophical dimension, and emphasizes compassion and harmony with the cosmic spirits.
Maybe its most known symbol is the Ying and Yang. In practice, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism all mix in China, and hence this temple reveres Laozi, Buddha, and Confucius equally.
The occidental world has something to learn from a system where 3 world religions mix peacefully.
The West Lake of Hangzhou
The main attraction point of Hangzhou is the West Lake. It is framed by numerous temples and pagodas, and populated by (Chinese) tourists.
It has its beauties...
...but in the end it is just a lake with much fog.
Hangzhou
Traffic lights in Hangzhou are very verbose. We just don’t know what they say.
To protect waiting cyclists from the rain, they have installed roofs. This does not seem to increase the cyclists’ readiness to wait at traffic lights, though.
We buy insect repellent. We do not know whether we have to spray this on the insect, feed it to the insect, rub it on our skin, or rub it on the insect’s skin. We will drink it in regular intervals and observe the effects.
VLDB conference
And yes, we also work. We are here at the VLDB conference. I give a talk and a tutorial. The conference is extremely well organized.
It offers a spectacular show right on the West Lake. We believe that it was a metaphorical summary of the history of China. We later find out that it was rather a love story between a snake‐turned‐human and a man.
Due to China’s one child policy, a single child has to fulfill all the parents’ dreams simultaneously. Hence, many children receive an extraordinary education. We see a proof of this.
Food remains a challenge. (And, no, this is not the flower decoration of the table that I put on my plate. This is the food!)
Chinese hotels often do not have a 4th floor, because 4 is the number of death. Also, this allows saving 1/7th of the cost when constructing a 7 floor building.
Flight to Changsha
I go to Changsha for an invited talk at the APWeb conference. China is literally booming. The cities are huge, and they become continuously larger.
This comes at a price, though. The entire country is covered by a layer of smog. The pictures shows the normal clouds and the background smog.
The APWeb organizers are extremely kind to me. For the first time in my life, one of these welcome panels at the airport is for me.
APWeb
The hotel of the APWeb conference is impressive. I give an invited talk.
The conference includes receptions and food,
but food remains a challenge (here: braised turtle). Fortunately, there is always plain rice. I become vegetarian.
Internet is painfully slow. In addition, Google, Gmail, and Dropbox are blocked in China. I try to change a flight reservation, and this is nearly impossible without access to my reservation emails.
The hotel phone cannot call to Europe. 3 very kind reception staff spend 3 hours trying to change the flight. I finally succeed myself by calling the agency via Skype.
The “great firewall of China” makes the internet a pain. As it turns out, the guy who invented it is even speaking at this conference (pictured). I’m surprised he’s still alive.
APWeb Banquet
The conference banquet has an acrobatic show.
Tradition has it that all professors have to sing. This applies only to Chinese professors, though.
After the banquet, we go to a foot massage. Pain and joy can be so close together...
Trip to Zhangjiajie
Clarification: The insect repellent has to be sprayed on the skin. This works much better than ingesting it.
We leave Changsha to go to Zhangjiajie. We pass by hundreds of skyscrapers. Changsha is just one of the 150 cities in China with more than 1m inhabitants.
The countryside of China is more third‐worldish.
It is covered by buildings, roads, and rice fields. Reportedly, in many villages, people live nearly exclusively on rice...
...which is a totally understandable from my perspective, given the alternatives.
Zhangjiajie Caves
Historical Chinese technology uses the flow of the water to turn a wheel, which lifts up the water into the tubes that lead to the fields.
The local pastime is to put a big fish in a cage with an even bigger fish, and watch as the latter eats the former.
We visit a cave and spend 2 hours following a Chinese‐speaking tour guide. Only 40% of the cave are open to visitors. 20% would have been OK, too.
The Chinese Communist Party promises to “answer all questions and address all complaints”. While we are still pondering whether to ask about P=NP or about the slow Internet, we have to leave.
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park
We visit the National Park where the movie “Avatar” was shot.
It’s not like we’re the only ones to have this idea.
The place does have its special atmosphere...
...and mysteriousness...
... as well as stunning 3D scenery...
... and startling depths...
...especially maybe at sunset.
The idea of padlocks has also found its friends.
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park reloaded
We have another day in the national park...
... this time going up by cable car.
The sandstone pillars are over 200 meters high. Since no man has ever set foot on their tops, the forests that grow there are untouched ecosystems.
The scenery is beautiful.
But in the end, it is the simple things in life that make people happy.
Trip to Shanghai
We leave Zhangjiajie to go back to Changsha. I resist the temptation to buy snacks in a road shop.
Back in Changsha, we try the local speciality: Fish head.
In case you want to prepare such food, take a Chinese plane. You might be lucky and see a cooking video (here: sea cucumber).
After this instructive plane trip, I take the magnetic levitation train in Shanghai.
It runs at 430 km/h, which is really fast.
It is evening in Shanghai. People gather in the streets, and the young learn skating.
The older people dance. One of the dances has Discofox music, resembles Jive, and is called Chacha.
When I ask a lady to dance with me, people form a circle around us in awe (or contempt; hard to tell if you don’t understand Chinese).
Longhua Temple
I visit the Longhua Temple. It belongs to Zen Buddhism, a school of Buddhism that concentrates on meditation.
People hold candles and pray in the four cardinal directions.
The Four Heavenly Kings are gods that protect the world and fight evil.
The 500 Arhat are those people who have attained Nirvana, i.e., a state of perfection.
The monks pray in monotonous singings.
The temples are decorated with fresh flowers. This has a clear olfactory advantage over the incense used in Christian places of worship.
Longhua Martyrs’ Cemetery
The Longhua Martyrs’ Cemetery commemorates the Communists (right sculpture) who were killed by Koumintang troops (left sculpture) in the Chinese Civil War.
The Koumintang women can be distinguished easily in their shape...
...from the Communist women. Something worth fighting for apparently.
Xintiandi
The Xintiandi plaza offers European style food and is very popular.
Only the local restaurant “Boi‐Ling Wing” has less guests. I wonder why...
East China Normal University (ECNU)
I give a talk at the ECNU. The university was created in 1952 from several institutions to follow the Soviet-style higher education system.
I am invited for lunch, and I explain that in Europe, there is a larger distance between the concepts of “animal” and “food”.
Yu Gardens
The Yu Gardens are the most crowded and touristic place I have seen here. All scams from the Wikivoyage page appear here, including the innocent young couple who wants to go out with you.
The bridges are in Zig-Zag, so that evil spirits cannot pass them. This is because evil spirits can only walk straight. Smart!
The garden does have its nice spots, but is dominated by stones and tourists rather than plants.
Bye bye Shanghai
Shopping malls provide pleasant relief from the heat outside. You can buy everything here, even cars.
They also sell Parisian baguette. It is delicious! I think I should go and check out the original one.
