December 10, 2011
China is already on our tomorrow
Some Shanghai business leaders were being polite the other night at dinner. They were saying stuff like "Shanghai tomorrow is New York today". Flattery. The reality, as Thomas Friedman is fond of pointing out, is more like this:
I left my Shanghai hotel in a taxi with a tv cycling ads, on a big new highway over a big new landmark bridge, then onto the 430 k/hr Mag-Lev train that got me from midtown to the terminal in 10 minutes. I could have taken the subway directly there too - for $0.30.
The Shanghai airport looks like a space port - insanely huge, very spacious to the point of emptiness, light and airy and shiny and glass all over. And seriously really big. Probably twice the size of JFK. Pictured above is Beijing where I connected. look at the vaulting 100 ft tall ceiling there. And returning home, I met Newark Airport, that bus terminal of an airport covered in tiles and plastic signage telling you to use the back door to find the Air Train. Then a monorail! Then New Jersey Transit's rickety system, a double decker train - which means they must be busy. And finally to this hell on Earth called Penn Station. And an out of service escalator.
