(Preface: I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to post entries. In Shanghai the internet at the hotel was prohibitively expensive, and in Tokyo it’s fleeting at times. We were greeted with a booklet here explaining how to set things up, including such gems as “It becomes completion with the above process by the preparation.” The screen shots were entirely in Japanese.)Welcome to China! The most amazing thing about the city of Shanghai to me was its dissimilarity to Mumbai. In the West, I feel like I’ve read a lot of press lumping Mumbai with Shanghai, as the glitzy faces of their respective countries, with their incredible growth and shiny new buildings, the former’s Bollywood and the latter’s French influences. But Shanghai is cleaner, better planned, more cosmopolitan and much more expensive. A lot of this is recent. In 1994, a quarter of the world’s cranes were in Shanghai, building Pudong, the skyscraper village on the east bank of the Huangpu River. (Today actually 72% of cranes are in Dubai. 72%!)
This was the only person that I saw sleeping on the street in Shanghai, and he found a bench! In Mumbai, it was common to see men sleeping in the middle of sidewalks, on medians, under store awnings…a different speed. I thought that I would spend more time in Shanghai itself, but several of our corporate visits were in satellite cities roughly the size of Chicago, so I feel like there’s a lot in Shanghai that I missed. But I did see a few things…
The Jade Buddha Temple
Our guide explained to us that over 80% of China’s population considers itself atheist, but superstition still reigns supreme in many areas.
These women have come from surrounding areas to worship the Buddha in his many forms, clutching incense sticks that send their prayers heavenwards with wispy smoke. Their bags are stamped with the symbols of temples that they have visited. 
The temple itself was beautiful, with classical Chinese architectural features, such as upward-sloping corners, which mimic bird’s tails and are supposed to be lucky. The interior included a giant Buddha carved of one piece of jade, who impressed me by seeming very humble. He had a strangely submissive expression for a god to whom people are offering everything from flowers to tomatoes to…single servings of Jello?
We weren’t permitted to photograph him, but downstairs there was an enormous hall of different personages of Buddha, which included the typical cheery Chinese figure and others, who may be avatars. Our guide told us that Buddhism arrived in the 6th century B.C. from India, and some of the figures had been changed into Chinese models, mostly the positive figures. The others, whom our guide termed as grotesque, “still had the Indian faces.” 
The Indian nationals in our group had their own ideas about this, I believe.
The temple itself was beautiful, with classical Chinese architectural features, such as upward-sloping corners, which mimic bird’s tails and are supposed to be lucky. The interior included a giant Buddha carved of one piece of jade, who impressed me by seeming very humble. He had a strangely submissive expression for a god to whom people are offering everything from flowers to tomatoes to…single servings of Jello?
We weren’t permitted to photograph him, but downstairs there was an enormous hall of different personages of Buddha, which included the typical cheery Chinese figure and others, who may be avatars. Our guide told us that Buddhism arrived in the 6th century B.C. from India, and some of the figures had been changed into Chinese models, mostly the positive figures. The others, whom our guide termed as grotesque, “still had the Indian faces.” The Indian nationals in our group had their own ideas about this, I believe. Here's a parting shot of Buddhist monks, who are cool enough to wear socks with sandals.
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