Here goes the first travelogue of the year!

Back to China once more since I haven’t been enough. Kind of scares me that 12-hour plane flights go faster than the 2.5 hour ones! Of course sleeping pills help – and big business class seats. My purpose this trip is to attend an annual trade show professionals conference called CEFCO. Went last year and it was in Shanghai. This year it’s in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan Province and the gateway to Tibet. It’s in the southwest part of the country.

Shanghai - what a HUGE city. The flight was fine - just really long but managed to get about 5 hours of sleep (more than what I got any night at the recent IAEE Convention in Vegas!). No lines at immigration. Last year we waited around an hour and a half…so it was a breeze. Taxi ride to the hotel was an “E Ticket” - the driver really has ambitions to be a race car driver. The hotel is fabulous. Liking the Renaissance Hotel brand in Asia A LOT.

Day one - off adventuring in the city. Goals: find a tailor to get a Chinese-style dress made, buy a pashmina (black) and a new purse (black). Found all at the Yatai Xinyang Fashion and Gift Market, which is located in a metro stop below the Science and Technology Museum. The museum is a couple of LONG, LONG blocks away from my hotel. And I worked out this morning why???

After shopping, hopped on the metro and went up to Peoples Square and Peoples Park. The metro is easy and cheap AND has an English feature - wandered about for about a dollar - round trip! They were playing U.S. football highlights on the TV screens in the rail cars. Ok - new one for me! The park is very beautiful, but the weather today is what my British friends refer to as “dreary”. I call it a super bad hair day! Would love to see the park in the sunshine. Must be amazing.

Wandered around looking at shops and people for awhile - sad to see beggars on the streets, mostly really young women with baby girls and cripples. There is still a tremendous amount of construction going on here and the architecture is quite amazing. Would have taken some photos but the fog obscures most of the tops of the buildings. After doing some research on the topic, turns out having a distinctive architectural detail is simply decoration. I thought it was some Feng Shui thing. Nope!

After dropping off my packages at the hotel, went in search of lunch. Was directed to a shopping center down the road a few blocks - and had lots of restaurants. Strangest sight: Cafe du Monde. That’s right. The same one from New Orleans, across from Franklin Square. Beignets and chicory flavored coffee imported from the Big Easy! Found a yummy Indian restaurant and ate there.

My good Aussie friend Jo-Anne Kelleway of InfoSalons who some of you know is also going to the same conference so we decided to share rooms in Shanghai and Chengdu and have “girl time”. Unfortunately, she was delayed in Hong Kong for 8 hours, so our plans to go out clubbing with a couple of her Aussie staff here went array.

Saturday was spent shopping. Very, very fun shopping. Went to the Shanghai South Bund Soft-Spinning Material Marketthat’s a 3-story building with stalls - all of whom are CUSTOM tailors! Jo ordered a suit from an ad in a magazine and I ordered a dress. We pick them up at 8am on Thursday morning…and did I mention both outfits are cashmere and lined? And under US$100 each??? YAY! My kind of shopping!

That night, we joined the rest of Joanne’s team and went to a super cool looking Thai restaurant in the French Concession area. Great. No Chinese food so far! After dinner went to the Glam Bar on the Bund. The Bund is a riverfront area made up of colonial-style buildings. We ended up with a view ofthe Pudongside of the river - all lights, billboards and strange but beautiful architecture that stays lit till 11:00pm. Then they turn them off. Saving electricity and helping contain the pollution perhaps? (FYI - Shanghai is very polluted). The crowd was upscale and mostly western. Heard people speaking French, German, Russian, English (all versions) but, alas no Spanish. Would have been fun to speak Spanish with people in China of all places!!!

Sunday morning came way too early. Went off to the airport (made a normal 45 minute drive in 30 minutes - my luck with cab/race car drivers is just amazing some times). The airport inter-country security is not like the strip search mentality in the U.S. Thankfully! We even put our partially drunk water bottles through the x-ray machine, picked ‘em up and kept going. No removing jackets, computers, shoes, jewelry, etc. No stripping!!!

After a super packed and bumpy flight punctuated by leaking liquid from the overhead compartment onto the people in the adjacent seats and the smell of cigarette smoke (on a non-smoking flight) coming from somewhere. One of our friends who lives in Hong Kong said the smoke was most likely from the pilots! Not an unusual occurrence apparently! And did you know that if you don’t speak Chinese, you can’t sit in the exit row?

Chengdu is located in the southwest part of China and is the capitol of the Sichuan Province. There is tons of construction going on everywhere - counted a good 40 cranes on the ride in from the airport. The city has 11.2 million people.

Here’s an interesting factoid: there is only one time zone in China. One. That’s it. So dawn arrives somewhere around 8:30-9:00am in Chengdu and around 6:30am or so in Shanghai and Beijing. Now before you think it’s a bad thing, think again! No 3-hour time difference from LA to New York! No waking up early to talk to the folks in the East. No waiting for the lazy slugs on the west coast to get up and go to work!

To be continued…