Shanghai, China - Part 1

It's now the second half of the week-long trip to China.  I'm now in Shanghai, just a short 2-hour flight from Beijing.

I'm staying in a Radisson hotel.  The crazy part is that they have already decorated for Christmas.  However, their concept of Christmas decorations are a little different than mine ; )  Their theme is "Christmas Graffitti"...yeah, you read that right.  Here are some pictures from the hotel lobby:

Next door to the hotel is a shopping mall.  Every time I visit, there are more and more U.S. franchises popping up.  One of the latest is a GREAT addition to Dairy Queen and Hagen Daaz:

For dinner, my team humored me with a meal at a Japanese restaurant.  I felt almost at home ; )

Before heading to sleep, I walked over to a nearby grocery store.  I always like to see what's available to the locals.  Good to see familiar breakfast cereal:

I wanted to grab a soda, so I located the appropriate aisle.  This caught me eye...if you look closely, you'll see that one of the liter bottles of Coke looks like it's given birth to a baby soda:

I always check the potato chip aisle, just to see what crazy flavors are available in China.  This time, I wasn't disappointed at all.  Joining some of my favorites are "Cheese Lobster Flavor" and "Fried Prawn Flavor". Yum!

 A couple of aisles over, I found cookies.  Since Mom loves Oreo cookies, I thought she might get a kick out of these crazy new flavors:

Then, the visit got a LOT more interesting ; )  I passed by the area that had meat and poultry.  I ran into the seafood.  The best part was the live seafood.  First up, were these guys:

Here's a quick video to show you the delightful selection:

The next day, we went to visit several software developers.  We started with a game developer.  Here's a snapshot of their lobby...you can't go wrong with a giant robot standing guard with the receptionist ; )

After the meeting, they gave us a tour of the studio and I found one employee that shares my love of toys and action figures:

The CEO of this company, along with his staff, presented me with an autographed copy of their game and a 200-page book containing all of their concept artwork.  It was a gorgeous gift and I was flattered:

We then went to lunch with their studio leaders.  They picked a unique restaurant that specializes in cuisine from the northeast part of China (there's no English name for the place, sorry).  A large selection of the menu contained lamb.  They ordered me this giant lamb shank.  I felt like a Viking!

Tomorrow, we head outside of the city (about a two-hour journey) to meet with developers.  More later!