Shanghai, Part 1

Today, I'm in Shanghai, China.  I'm here to visit with some game developers, and to attend a trade show called ChinaJoy.  After arriving at the airport, I took a train into the middle of the city.  This is no ordinary train - it's a "maglev" (magnetic levitation).  My guts were hurled at over 190 mph (301 km/h) through China.  Fortunately, everything ended up at the same place...

Shanghai's Speedy MagLev Train

I'm staying in a section of Shanghai called Pudong.  This used to be a horrible part of the city - crime-infested, prostitution-laden slums - a great place to vacation ; )  The Chinese government made some big changes, cleaned things up, and instituted a tax-break area to get business investment.  It's turned into an amazing success (depends on how you define that, actually) and is growing like crazy.

I'm staying at a Radisson Hotel - not considered the hippest hotel chain.  However, this is one of the most modern-decorated hotels I've stayed in.  A couple of pictures of my room:

Yes, you can see directly into the bathroom

I had a spare hour last night, and I walked into a grocery store. I often find interesting and disgusting products for sale. Having grown up working at a produce market (shout out to the Cabbage Patch), I headed over to the produce section. I found this interesting fruit:

Try picking that up and putting it into your cart!

In my room, I came upon another interesting piece of produce:

It's called Dragon Fruit

No trip to China would be complete without being offered counterfeit DVDs on the street.  This trip saw an interesting twist to this tradition.  I was offered Blu-Ray discs.  Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about - you can apologize to me later - but it's a high-def video format that is actually expensive to produce.  I have no idea how the counterfeiters are getting this new format cheap enough.

That's it for now...