On Sunday morning China time, my favorite part of our hotel in Shanghai. the breakfast buffet. There are stations with multi-cultural selections and chefs: Chinese, American, Japanese, Muslim, Eastern and Western European, plus things like an omelet bar, cereal bar, fresh fruit bar, and more. Food is plentiful and freshly made – hand-pulled Muslim noodles (see below) in a tasty broth are nice for jet lagged stomachs. I prefer the sushi and tropical fruit.
Student fears of going hungry are allayed. No one will starve! Quite the contrary. We’ll continue the Bloch Executive MBA tradition of eating our way to enhanced executive presence, now taking it to the global level.
Our other plans for today:
We’ll begin our exploration of Shanghai with a walk from the hotel to the Yu Yuan Garden which dates back to the Ming Dynasty in the 1500’s. That will be followed by a Chinese tea tasting at a nearby tea house from the same era.
Our travels through local neighborhoods to the ancient Garden that is still very popular with local folks – and our encounters with a few of the 1.3 billion fake Rolex salespeople working the streets in the shops’ area surrounding the Garden – provide a vivid picture of the contrasts between old and new that live side-by-side in China today.
We’ll then board a bus and tour the city, with a stop at the Jade Buddha temple. The temple is also a working Buddhist monastery – interesting in a country where politics has long controlled religion, eh?
There will be shopping in the afternoon for those still rarin’ to go – and a chance to practice our negotiation skills. Not for the faint of heart! We’ve got out notes for how to play out this enjoyable and everyday theater of market economics. I’m looking for a special kind of jacket for my son.
We’ll end the evening with a welcome dinner on the Bund. Our pre-dinner speaker is local historian Peter Hibbard, author of the Odyssey Guide to Shanghai, Bund Shanghai, and others to provide a local perspective on Shanghai, past and present.
The Bund is the historic old colonial banking area that borders the Huangpu River running through the city.
It is also the best place to view the skyscrapers of modern Shanghai by night that are located across the river. Clear weather provides a breathtaking view.
