random highlights of china trip
i'm back! (i actually got back wednesday night at around 9:30.) here are some random highlights from my trip--sorry for the lack of coherency, coherency will come later, after i process the three weeks myself.
-- first thing we see when we land in china at shanghai's pudong airport is this gigantic welcome sign sponsored by a wharton alumni association in shanghai, bearing the inscription, "Wharton, the best business school in the world." hehe, i love my school ;D
-- i ate a lot in china. virtually every day, someone was treating us to lunch or dinner or both. some of the weird stuff i ate: live shrimp (brought to you in a covered bowl, still jumping around and slowly suffocating in the soy sauce/chili mix), snake, donkey, rabbit and this vegetable that rabbits eat in the same meal, sushi-flavored Lays, and lots of lots of shellfish (very fresh, very good). luckily, i didn't gain any weight :)
-- china eastern airlines' safety video is anime! LOL. and chinese airline food is better.
-- yao ming is everywhere! as if he were the national symbol of china! at the airport, on billboards, at mcdonald's, along the street in never-ending signs, at the street corner, all over the tv, selling cell phones, smiling at you from life-size cutouts, etc., etc., etc.!
-- i finally found a starbucks--in shanghai. and it's still as overpriced as ever. but i don't care. i'll get my frappucino no matter what the cost!
-- there was a u-turn light in shanghai. how cool is that? there are also a lot of traffic lights with timers on them so you can see how long the green/yellow/red light will last. i like how the yellow light lasts 2 seconds.
-- i watched a lot of euro 2004--it seems all of china is obsessed with it (beckham is almost everywhere, being signed to pepsi and all)--the wimbledon finals (roddick: "i threw the kitchen sink at [federer] but he went to his bathroom and got his tub." lol), some anime, and a lot of random chinese shows.
-- chinese propaganda slogans sound decent and even heroic sometimes in the chinese, but sound ridiculous once translated into english. take this for example: "based on human with a principle of scientific development conception and constructing a modern coastal city proper in an overall way." yeah.
-- conclusion: the southern coastal area is much better than the northern central region. i'm not being biased, i'm being realistic. the north is years behind the south in development. and although the south has issues with english translations, at least it has english translations.
-- first thing we see when we land in china at shanghai's pudong airport is this gigantic welcome sign sponsored by a wharton alumni association in shanghai, bearing the inscription, "Wharton, the best business school in the world." hehe, i love my school ;D
-- i ate a lot in china. virtually every day, someone was treating us to lunch or dinner or both. some of the weird stuff i ate: live shrimp (brought to you in a covered bowl, still jumping around and slowly suffocating in the soy sauce/chili mix), snake, donkey, rabbit and this vegetable that rabbits eat in the same meal, sushi-flavored Lays, and lots of lots of shellfish (very fresh, very good). luckily, i didn't gain any weight :)
-- china eastern airlines' safety video is anime! LOL. and chinese airline food is better.
-- yao ming is everywhere! as if he were the national symbol of china! at the airport, on billboards, at mcdonald's, along the street in never-ending signs, at the street corner, all over the tv, selling cell phones, smiling at you from life-size cutouts, etc., etc., etc.!
-- i finally found a starbucks--in shanghai. and it's still as overpriced as ever. but i don't care. i'll get my frappucino no matter what the cost!
-- there was a u-turn light in shanghai. how cool is that? there are also a lot of traffic lights with timers on them so you can see how long the green/yellow/red light will last. i like how the yellow light lasts 2 seconds.
-- i watched a lot of euro 2004--it seems all of china is obsessed with it (beckham is almost everywhere, being signed to pepsi and all)--the wimbledon finals (roddick: "i threw the kitchen sink at [federer] but he went to his bathroom and got his tub." lol), some anime, and a lot of random chinese shows.
-- chinese propaganda slogans sound decent and even heroic sometimes in the chinese, but sound ridiculous once translated into english. take this for example: "based on human with a principle of scientific development conception and constructing a modern coastal city proper in an overall way." yeah.
-- conclusion: the southern coastal area is much better than the northern central region. i'm not being biased, i'm being realistic. the north is years behind the south in development. and although the south has issues with english translations, at least it has english translations.