A lot of paperwork is involved in shipping goods out of China. Fortunately most of it is taken care of by the moving company. But this time my headache is that they take away my passport for three days to do customs clearance. So during those 3 days I can’t apply for a visa at the Japanese embassy or even do something simple like check into a hotel. None of this would be so bad except that I am on a very tight schedule for leaving the country. Oh well, I suppose part of the experience of living in China is learning how to deal with getting out.
Category: China
Tonight was the 6th night of the last 9 that I’ve eaten dinner out. This time was a dinner marking the arrival of two new staff and the departure of one. The food was apparently Macao-style soup. I’m not sure what you would call this in English, but you basically get a little pot with a flame under it and put various vegetables and meats inside cooking them in a boiling broth. After a couple minutes you pick the stuff out with chopsticks and dip in a sauce and eat. While everyone was saying the food was Macao-style I swear I had exactly the same thing a few weeks ago and everyone was calling it Taiwanese food. 
Anyway, it’s actually pretty good (despite how it looks in the pictures) and you get to pick and mix your own sauces for dipping.
Looking forward to the weekend already…except that I’ve got another dinner on Saturday night!
For whatever reason I (and probably everyone else living in China) am not able to access my Gmail account since last night. If anyone is trying to reach me you can leave a comment on this post and I’ll get back to you.
Not only is Gmail being blocked right now, Google (including even google.com.cn) is also completely blocked for some reason. I wonder what Google did to get the government angry? Or is this just one of those temporary blockages that no one can explain and mysteriously goes away after a few days?
I’ve had good success with Gmail over the past year since moving to China. Until now even when Google.com or Gmail.com have been blocked I have always been able to download my email using a regular email client like Thunderbird. This time – no dice. No access at all and no idea when the situation might improve.
>>> UPDATE: It seems this was a problem with OpenDNS. I turned it off and now both Gmail and Google work. I can’t believe OpenDNS would block Google (that would be suicidal) so I am guessing it was actually due to a conflict between my provider here in China and OpenDNS. China Telecom probably doesn’t like people using DNS other than their own. Who knows.
For those of you who might be interested in typical Shanghai scenery I took a few pics from my taxi along the way home today from getting my haircut.
As we made our way through an intersection I snapped this pic of another taxi. The most popular (by far) model of taxi is made by VW. These VW’s are made in China as VW has had a (joint venture?) plant here for a long time. Taxi’s in Shanghai are usually pretty clean and quite cheap.
This is a pic of the backside of what is now an exhibition center. You can see the Chinese flag flying above the building.
The bus is a very popular form of mass transit here. I haven’t ridden one in Shanghai but they look pretty good and I know they are relatively cheap. Some are air-conditioned (some not).
The black car parked on the street is a Buick. Like the VW this is actually made right here in China. This style of car is very popular as a company car and a lot of business people use them and have a driver. Having a car and driver is certainly more expensive than driving yourself, but still a lot a cheaper relatively speaking than it would be in many western countries.
This is what I would call a typical local storefront. Some boxes on the street. A little disorganized looking. But the prices will certainly be lower than if you went shopping for the same kind of stuff at a western style supermarket.
The trip home took about 15 minutes (not much traffic today) and cost about 15 RMB. That’s about US $2.
I decided to check out one of Shanghai’s newest hotels, the Le Royal Meridien. It is actually not so new now having opened up just over six months ago. The hotel itself is located in a big modern skyscraper with the lobby on about the 8th floor (or something like that) and rooms above that up to the 60 something floor. 
The location is convenient for shopping and sightseeing with the base of the hotel being located right off Nanjing Rd., the major tourist shopping street. I checked out a couple of rooms. The first was a “standard” Grand Deluxe Room. A little small but with enough room for a desk, chair and decent sized bathroom. I also checked out a Grand Deluxe Suite. These rooms seems to be located on the corners of the building. The one I checked out had a separate bedroom and living area. The living area had a nice sofa and chairs, flat panel TV, small dining table, and bar/kitchen area (which you can’t see in my picture).
This is the Grand Deluxe Room
This is the Grand Deluxe Suite (the bedroom is similar to above).
There is a lot in Shanghai that is cheaper compared to wetern countries or Japan. Not luxury hotels. Rooms here start at around USD $250 a night. But if you want a modern first class hotel in a very convenient location, then you might want to check the Le Meridien out.