Welcome to the Future - China part 1

**Apologies for the lateness of this blog - I've only just figured out a work around so I can post while in mainland China**

"Welcome to the future" reads a massive billboard from a mobile phone company, on the road which leads from Shanghai's PuDong Airport into the city. Crossing the Lupu Bridge into the centre of the city, I stare at the 100's of skyscrapers lining each side of the Huangpo river, it's hard to disagree.

If Beijing is taking all the attention in 2008 for the once-a-four-year extended School games-athon, Shanghai is just busy getting on with the job of becoming the centre of the world. Every major business and finance organisation is setting up shop here. PuDong which was twenty years ago forgotten marsh land is now a real life version of Mega-City Four. Gleaming towers to capitalism push ever upwards into the sky. The biggest construction sites in the world are operated by an army of workers from China's rural heartland. They are relentlessly building more. Maps which are printed only a few years ago are almost redundant, such is the pace of change.

Walking around The Bund, you get a sense of how fast things are moving. The old, grand colonial buildings which once housed the banking houses are now swish restaurants and bars. A gawdy psychedelic 'tourist tunnel' now runs underneath the river to where the real action is in PuDong. Old versus new separated only by a muddy stretch of river.

The Bund's eight lanes of clogged traffic is a testament to Shanghai's new monied middle classes.They have long since flipped their bicycles for silver Diahatsu's. Fashionable teens parade up and down with mobile phones clamped to their ears, ignoring the mandolin player reciting old Chinese folk tunes. The street food stalls which mobbed the Shanghai of the 1930's have all but disappeared, to be replaced by fast food joints. McDonald's and Burger King are fighting it out with Sushi Now! and cheese cake vendors for custom.

The joys of Heathrow

Well it's five days until project China, and the last few weeks have been a heady whirl of getting everything in order, research and pfaffing about.

One of the main joys of being based in London is that I get to use Heathrow Airport far more than is healthy. Last week American Airlines exec, Don Langford called Heathrow "the worst of all the airports that my company flies to in Europe" and "a bit of a dump". Well Duh! Of course it is! Why give millions of visitors a false impression of London and the UK? Spend an hour trying to reclaim baggage at T5, and your expectations of our country will be so diminshed that even the slightest kindness will be welcome.

Even if T3 is falling apart, and T5 should never have been opened until properly tested, millions of passengers use Heathrow every year. It still is the busiest international airport in the world. The competion amongst airlines to gain landing slots is fierce. Just ask the residents under the flightpath.

Getting into the centre of London is still a pain though. Taxi's cost at least 50 GBP and the tube takes up to 1 hour. Heathrow Express at 15.50 GBP single trip is the most expensive per mile train service in the world.

For the frugal there is another option, Heathrow Connect. Using the same train track as the Heathrow Express, it takes 12 minutes longer as it stops en route to get into Paddington. The benefit is it only costs 6.90 GBP single fare and you are not stuck on a coach on the M4, or a tube signal fault on the Piccadilly line.

Either way I'll be there midday on Sunday queuing up under broken lightbulbs and torn lino. I think that for all it's faults Heathrow is a great place. It's a vibrant mini-city full of humanity, joy and tears. Shabby as it may be it's one of my favourite things about London. Now onwards to Shanghai!