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.

Destination China - 32 days and counting

So I'm back posting again after a long while. Hurrah!

I'm also back out in to the big wide world to report on the most interesting, vivid and bizarre places. In the process meeting fun and strange people, and of course attending any cultural festival I can find.

So in just over a month I'm heading off to resume an unfinished part of last year's tour, China. Having run out of time in Hong Kong I had to race back to the UK for two important weddings. As I bored my plane I vowed to return as soon as possible to this vast, strange, controversial and increasingly globally vital country.

With the help of Virgin Atlantic I'm flying off to Shanghai in May. Before you can fly though, you have to visit the Chinese Embassy for a visa. After the events of this weekend, I was not sure what to find as I approached Portland Place in London.


There was certainly a big big crowd as I approached the door to the visa application building. I asked one man standing there what the big crowd was for, half in mind that fire extinguishers might be let off any moment and cries of "Free Tibet!" would ring in to the air. I was to be disappointed, it was THE QUEUE for getting a visa. And it stretched all the way around the block.

As it was 11am and the office closed at 12, there was no chance in getting served. I resigned myself to the inevitable, I wasn't thwarted by protestors, but by the popularity of people wanting to visit the Country. I laughed, then strode off to the magnificent Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street to peruse their brilliant downstairs Asia section.

So we try again tomorrow!