Q's Mind: Shanghai: 23 November 2009

Shanghai: 23 November 2009
8:10am... Waking up to a Monday morning~ breakfast at the hotel is always something I looked forward to...
9:00am~ Setting off for some serious business... our China partner hired a driver who is more familiar with the road around there. Wise choice... China is WAY TOO BIG to familiarize with all Cities... Driver's surname is Cao... 曹曹's 曹...
Random street view... cloudless day... somehow, I think Japan's sky is more blue...
9:22pm~ passing a toll...
9:33am... This place amazes me... Its a heavy machinery factory... and its so huge it runs for a couple of kilometers... with those cranes and wheel-loaders parked side by side...
See the video clip below...

9:34am... with the car traveling at approx. 120kmph, we finally reached the other end of the factory after about 1 minute... that would meant that the factory is about more than 2 km from one end to the other end... in addition, it took me a while to notice how much heavy machinery I saw there that I decided to whip out my camera and start taking photos...

This factory belongs to LONKING... 龙工...

9:48am... Shanghai is developing at an amazing speed... every where we traveled, highways and bridges are being built... inter-linking all cities...

China is gonna be the next BIG thing...

Vast land... rich in resources...

9:56am... at another toll... one thing I came to realize when traveling for work overseas... traveling in a car for many hours is something very common...

10:19am... Finally arrived at our destination... AAA Steel Group... (Ranka Lee is my designated censorship mascot this season)... ^^"

This place here is only the warehouse... and its like 6 football fields?

China is considered one of the world biggest steel makers... we were there to ascertain the production capacity of this company...

and they sure have what we were looking for... one of these bars fetches for about S$10 - 14K when it reaches Singapore...

and they have ready supplies...

... and a lot of them... in differing grades...

11:42pm... refueling at a petrol kiosk

sadly, the convenience shop at the petrol kiosk sells only mineral water and ice tea... nothing else... I was hoping to pick up some souvenirs from such places; in Japan, petrol kiosks are so much fun~

12:12pm... on the way back, we past by that LONKING factory again...

its was then that I realised that what lies behind this whole stretch of LONKING heavy machinery factory.... was also MORE of LONKING's factory... scary...

1:13pm~ Lunch @ a Chinese restaurant... 天天渔港 restaurant... instead of the usual wet tissue, this place offers heated towels~ nice touch in cold weathers...

3:32pm~ random street view... had went to another steel trading company to a short discussion...

This is probably the closest I got to the tallest building in Shanghai...

The Shanghai World Financial Centre...

completed in year 2008, it stands at 492meters tall with 101 floors~

4:44pm~ oh... one interesting feature I like about Shanghai's road is this... they have this electronic board overhead showing road-users of the traffic conditions ahead... definitely useful in traffic congestions...

4:53pm... random street views... I only have 4 words to describe Shanghai... 高楼大厦~

4:58pm~ we arrived at Shanghai Train Station...

bought a couple of tickets for the 7pm ride...

5:30pm~ hmmm we had kind of dinner at some sort of Xiao Long Bao fast food restaurant... If I could recall accurately, these Xiao Long Bao was sold in terms of "Jin" ( 斤 )... weight. So thats about 2 KG of Xiao Long Bao you see on the table...

I had enough Xiao Long Bao that evening I probably won't touch any for a year...

6:51pm @ the train station... waiting and waiting for the train...

the gantries...

7:48pm~ finally boarded the train... train was delayed...

got ourselves 1st class cabin seats... heading for Wuxi~ about 125 kilometers Northwest from Shanghai city...

8:48pm... we arrived at Wuxi, Jiangsu... an hour later...

I kinda fell in love with train rides~ xD

along the way out... I noticed there were many of such advertisements everywhere... featuring industrial processing machines for all sorts of purposes... Jiangsu is very much an industrial city...

sadly, there were many people living out in the streets...

This is a common sight at the railway station... mind you, its freezing out there and these people got to survive the harsh coldness...

Oh ya, about Taxis in Wuxi city... 90% of these taxis runs on CNG gases, so they have this HUGE cylinder in the boot behind... for travelers with huge-ass luggages, its pretty troublesome as the boot could only hold 1 large suitcase...