All posts by Steve Stern

Shanghai Auto Show redux

Cars, China, Travel

We went back to the Auto Show on Sunday. To save time, we took a taxi which are very cheap here, and, as we got close, the crowds got bigger and bigger. Just to get tickets, we had to wait in line for about an half hour. To get in the first time, we went through metal detectors and put our cameras and day packs through a x-ray tunnel. This time the system was overwhelmed. The crowd just walked through the metal detectors, each detector dutiful beeping as each person walked through – but nobody stopped and nobody was actually checked.

This show is huge. The building is V-shaped with five halls in one wing and six in the other wing. Each hall is so big, it is hard to show it's actual size. And each hall is so crowded, it is hard to move around. Most of the time, the crowds are fun – people jumping up and down trying to see the cars or jamming forward to see a show or model with a car -  sometimes, the crowds are annoying – bumping and pushing  into us while we are trying to take a picture or are just standing looking at something – once the crowd got scary – when it got so packed nobody could move, somewhere between the Bentley and Subaru areas (the police and fire department in full gear had to come in to get break up the jam). This pic, taken by Michele by holding her camera over her head, sort of shows it.
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Of the eleven halls, nine are filled with cars, plus there is a large area between the legs of the V for parts vendors a couple who we saw as we walked from the West Halls to the East Halls.

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In short, anybody who expects to be in the car business on the world stage, has to be be here – in force.

The big players even put on various types of shows to drawn attention to their displays (in this case, Chery successfully drew a large part of the crowd from the new 4 door Porsche across the hall):

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and everybody has impossibly beautiful, tall, presenters. 

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The overwhelming, overall, impression we walked away with is that China is a serious player on this stage. China is in it for the long run and is looking towards the future. If you like cars, this is one show you should see at least once in your life.

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It’s a small world

Cars, China

At the Auto Show, everybody had  huge video displays with overwhelmingly loud soundtracks. Almost all of them based on African music (or, more accurately, African music as developed by African slaves brought to the United States and then perfected by African-Americans as freed men and women. Rock. Jazz. Rap.) African music is now World Music – the music played at a Auto Show in China or a concert in England.

All business transactions, in China, in the US, everywhere, involve the numbering system based on the Hindu positional, numeral system developed in India about a thousand years ago.

Why?

Because, in the world today, the most powerful answers become the most dominant answers. It really is becoming a small world.

I write this after watching Jenson Button winning his third F1 victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix. Michele and I watched the race in a sports bar, The Big Bamboo, in the West Nanjing Road area of Shanghai broadcast on a English language feed from Malaysia. Michele drank a couple of Scotches (neat) and I drank a couple of glasses of red wine from Chile – Michele had a hamburger and I had a Ruben sandwich. The world is small and life can be very sweet.

Buying a genuine fake watch

Cars, China

One of the things I have wanted to do while in China is buy a good fake watch. Not a piece of junk that only looks like the real thing from 30 paces and weighs nothing: but a watch with a real automatic movement (not battery operated quartz) and the heft to feel like the real thing. While still back home, I had read that the best automatic movements for fake watches were made in Japan. But there is a certain paradox in trusting the person selling you the watch – that is fake, after all – is selling you a real Japanese movement that will last much longer than the time it takes to get out of Shanghai.

To make matters even worse, the best watches are supposed to be found only in little shops off back alleys – the kind of place where they run a white slave trade. Walking down the street, about every 15 feet, somebody is trying to sell us a watch and we would walk straight ahead and keep on talking to ignore them. At some point, at about tout 42, I thought, Hey, I want to but a fake watch, I'll say Yes to the next person. And it worked out great! We were lead down a back alley to a little shop.

They had all kinds of cheap watches, but, when I told them I wanted a genuine fake watch with a real Japanese movement, they started bringing out suitcases with all kinds of watches. What do you want, Rolex? Britling? Tag Huer? Patak Philippe? Each suitcase was full of one brand of phony watches. I finally settled on a Patak Philippe that looks and feels real including a glass back so I can see the real, fake movement.

Mission accomplished.

   

Shanghai Auto Show

Cars, China

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
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and some I am pretty sure I will never see again,
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we came to a huge General Motors display.
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including Chinese auto girls
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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,
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and reviewing the troops.
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now we will have to come back to see all the halls we missed. Maybe on Saturday.