The Intel site is very nice and the buildings are new. Intel uses several floors of a leased building and has built one of their own. They plan to start work on a second building later this year. There is a nice large cafeteria and even a convenience store in the cafeteria to buy general supplies (including some toiletries, underwear and stockings). There are a fair number of expats in Shanghai, so most people on campus are relatively comfortable speaking in English.Unlike Malaysia, it can be difficult to find anyone who can speak English in Shanghai, so you need to be prepared at all times to communicate without spoken or written words. One example is that before you take a taxi anywhere, you need to get someone to write down the Chinese directions to any place you want to go, including back to your hotel. Al says that frequently the taxi driver will pass back a cell phone to have you call someone who can speak Chinese if they don't understand where you are asking to go. It may seem easy to tell a taxi driver to take you back to the Sheraton at the end of the day, but the Chinese word for "Sheraton" doesn't sound anything like the English word "Sheraton" (and there is probably more than 1 Sheraton), so that won't work unless you have an "address card" with you.
I was consistently impressed with the food while I was there. First, the restaurants and cafeteria are less conscious of food restrictions (altho those restaurants and meal selections are available for people who are interested), so I had a cheeseburger at Hooters, baby-back ribs at Tony Roma's, and even "Hong Kong" food at Bi Feng Tang (a restaurant chain in Shanghai). In fact, the only thing I didn't have was actual "Shanghai-ese food", but it was good to have beef and pork prepared in familiar ways, so I cheated a bit on this trip. Next time I go, local food only! :)
Driving around Shanghai was quite interesting. It's a huge city - it took about an hour to ride to the Intel campus from our hotel by bus or by taxi and that distance was less than half the size of the city. It was nice to see cars that were more familiar brands like Honda and Toyota, but particularly interesting was how many Volkswagens and GM cars there were. It turns out that VW was the first foreign company to manufacture cars in China so at one point all government cars and taxis were VWs. More recently, GM started making Buicks in China so many government cars are now Buicks, but most taxis are still VW. I expected to see many more cars by Asian vendors, but they were less common than VW & GM. It seems this is one example of the tension between China and Japan - it's almost unpatriotic for Chinese consumers to support Japanese brands (this last part is just my impression, no one directly confirmed this).
You can view some of the pictures I took by clicking the web album below, but there were 2 interesting things I observed that I didn't expect. First, all of the taxis separate the driver from the passengers with a cocoon type assembly. I guess this is like in bigger cities in the US where there is Plexiglas between the front and back seat, but it looks very odd if you haven't seen it before. I included one picture of that to give you an idea of how it looks.
The second thing I noticed is that many of the apartment residents in Shanghai have decided to "glass-in" their balconies. I'd estimate that some buildings have more than 70% of the balconies glassed in. I tried to take some pictures of this, but it may be hard to see. I asked why this was and I was told that people did it to reduce noise of the city, make their balcony more safe for family members and reduce the dust and pollution in the air in their apartment. I suspect it also gives them a bit more living space, as some of the balconies look like they could work as a small bedroom.
Overall, I enjoyed the unique building architecture around Shanghai and took several pictures to give you an idea of the diversity. There is not much to see of older architecture because the newer buildings are so tall, but you can see some of the older buildings in areas like "The Bund". I took some nighttime pictures of buildings in The Bund. You can read more about The Bund here. Sadly, my camera doesn't take very good pictures at night, so if you're curious to see The Bund in daylight, you can view some pictures here.
I was able to take one day to do some tourist type stuff while I was there. Al played tour guide in the morning and took me to Yu Yuan Garden. This is a several-hundred-year old rock and water garden in the middle of downtown Shanghai. It's nice to get inside and get away from all the noise and crowds of the city for a while. Shanghai is relatively hot this time of year, but the humidity is much less than Penang, so it felt about like a hot day in Portland. Rock gardens are very popular in Shanghai, in fact here's a picture of me standing in front of "one of the three greatest rocks in all of China" (so we were told). It's not my most flattering picture, so focus on the rock in the background. :)
In the afternoon, we took a guided tour offered by one of the hotels. We drove thru the Xin Tian Di area of Shanghai (you can read details of the area here) and then went to the People's Square. At the square, you are right between the Grand Theater and the Shanghai Museum and you can see lots of impressive buildings in the area.
Finally, we went to the Jade Buddha Temple, one of the few temples spared in the Cultural Revolution. They have 3 unique Buddha statues made of jade, as well as several other statues made of sandalwood and other material. Our tour guide gave us an overview of the Buddhist religious history which was very interesting as well, especially the parallels with some of the other world religions (3 images of Buddha in 1 Buddha, a female Buddha image that is also held in high regard, etc).
On a separate note, I only heard about the British airplane terrorist plot after I got back to Malaysia, but it's impressive that they were able to stop it. I will be interested in seeing how that affects my upcoming travel, as I'm planning to return to Portland at the end of the month.
I'm trying a new thing with my pictures this week, using Google's Picasa Web Folders instead of Shutterfly. If you have any feedback on which interface is better, let me know. To view many other pictures from my trip to Shanghai, please click the web album here:
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