Shanghai is the New York City of China

This is what I have determined as we wandered the city. First there are tall high rise and sky scrapers as far as the eye can see. I took a picture from my hotel window and it’s just a packed skyline. Well for as far as you can see… There is a constant haze and fog surrounding the city from all the pollution! It is very bad and in fact at the end of the first night of wandering a bit my throat was sore from it. There are also so many people in every direction and no personal space. They are packed in like crazy.
Today we went on a few account visits so we were out in the city a bit more and mostly in some of the main shopping areas of Shanghai. We went to the flagship Nike Shanghai store that was incredibly impressive inside. It was on a shopping drag that reminded me so much of Time Square in NYC because of the sheer number of people and the neon advertisement signs everywhere. I bought quite a few things already on this trip and as a side noted… I need to stop shopping! There are products and colors here that we don’t have in the US, so I had to get them. The worst part of shopping in foreign countries is that I never seem to keep track of the exchange rate and what is a good deal. So I’m probably paying way too much for some of these things but its not fully registering.
Shanghai is definitely where the Chinese come to shop. It’s the shopping mecca. I can’t afford half the brands I’ve seen here. Hermes, Dior, Cartier, Gautlier etc…I don’t even know who has the money to shop at these stores. Obviously the wealthy, but I’m not sure who those people are yet. It is definitely not the picture of China that I grew up seeing in pictures with typical communism Mao suits on all. In fact we were joking that they seem to be making up lost time here by wearing every color in the spectrum and they have no qualms about mixing and matching any print/color combo you can imagine. The city is very cosmopolitan and full of amazing restaurants, stores, amazing architecture in the buildings.
There are also so many contrasts of the old and the new. It was not uncommon today to see bicycles pulling carts down the street right next to the main shopping malls full of high end name brands. And that can even be defined deeper in how old is “old”. For example we wandered the area of the Bund (pronounced bunned). The Bund is a collection of old historic buildings (circa 1920’s or so) where many of the old embassies used to have offices. So many have wonderful art deco architecture! It’s a great walking street and we had dinner at a beautiful restaurant there where I sat with a gorgeous view of across the river of the newer financial district. Of course polite as always the best seats were reserved for us to enjoy the views. So far I think I can definitely handle visiting Shanghai often. Which is good because I know its in the plan for this year for me already. I'm so very happy to have a Starbucks and a slew of nice "western" resturants near the hotel. P.S. the Ritz Carlton is FANTASTIC. I love it. I'll post some pic's to Dropshots.