When we got up Friday morning, it was raining so we changed our plans and went to the Shanghai Auto Show . After all, that was the raison d'être for being here in the first place. I think that China is now the biggest automobile market in the world (I know more Audi's and Buick's are sold here than in the US). It was a madhouse and great fun: thousand of Chinese auto fans, each with a camera and many with SLRs with huge lenses. After wandering through the West Hall with numerous cars I've never seen or heard of before
and some I am pretty sure I will never see again,
we came to a huge General Motors display.
including Chinese auto girls
It was very impressive and made us hopeful for the poor beleaguered General. We moved on to the East Hall which was full of other Chinese cars we had never heard of and a meager sprinkling of European cars. It was very disappointing and we kept saying There must be another hall. Finally, we figured it out, we had been in West 1 and East 1 and we had, not one, not two, but seven more halls to go to. This show is huge! Maybe five times the size of the San Fransisco show. And they closed early (5PM). We had expected it to stay open to at least nine but we began to expect they were closing when they started covering the cars,
and reviewing the troops.
now we will have to come back to see all the halls we missed. Maybe on Saturday.
As I drove through the strip mall, casino schlock to get to my hotel room here in South Lake Tahoe, I thought of your earlier post regarding the Chinese “treatment” of spectacular landscapes. Fortunately the tilt up nature of commercial development here could be handled by one good wildfire.
I’m impressed with your capacity to operate in such a fish bowl as tourists. The little experience I’ve had of that (Nepal, Morocco) drove me crazy. Kudos to you for putting your foot down at the tea ceremony and getting out of there. If it had been me, I’d still be sitting there smiling and nodding. You guys are intrepid. Lets travel somewhere together!