Returned to Shanghai, and ready for part 2

Just returned from Hong Kong and I find myself behind my computer to work on my blog. I had a very good time with my friend Theo in Hong Kong, but I must say I’m happy to have returned to Shanghai. It really felt like coming ‘home’. I was in Hong Kong for 10 days and that’s quite a while. I was a little scared it would be strange to come back, but it feels very good and I’m ready to enter the second chapter of my stay in China. In Hong Kong I didn’t speak any Chinese for two weeks, but my first taxi ride from the airport gave me confidence – I didn’t forgot everything.

Shanghai is totally cold, when I arrived here tonight the outside temperature was only two degrees above zero. An extremely big difference with the sunny HK-days I have enjoyed the last two weeks. During the day I could leave the house in my shirt – Hong Kong in December, wow! However, this winter feeling in Shanghai also makes my Dutch heart beat a little faster. In Hong Kong I got most of my planned work done and even met a few interesting people - so I slowly start to expend my network all over China and I get in a position to start to connect more and more dots.

Everyday I made long hours in Theo house to finish all my outlines and plans of the coming six months. I was glued to the computer screen. On Monday and Tuesday I didn’t even leave his apartment to have a nice walk in the sun. To make up for all the hard work I treated myself to a visit to Macau on Thursday. Macau is the Las Vegas of China, and close to Hong Kong. You can take the boat there, which will only take you an hour. I have never been to Vegas, but I think the experience will be similar. The casinos in Macau are gigantic buildings, containing thousands of hotels room, a bunch of restaurants, a complete shopping centre, conference rooms and of course very large play halls. There are maybe 10-20 of these mega casinos in Macau today, but they are currently building the same amount of new ones. Macau will definitely be the Vegas of the 21st century. Impressive! I tried my luck on the slot machines, but I've seem to have lost that somewhere along the way.

Gambling is illegal in China, but Macau is like Hong Kong and Taiwan a SAR (Special Administrative Region). The Chinese call this: “One country, two systems” (I think they say this, because “One country, four systems” would sound a little overwhelming for us Westerns). So gambling is illegal, but not in Macau – that's simply another system. Quite a smart why to keep people happy and in the meanwhile keep the mainland ‘free’ of those ‘evil’ gamblers. Until 1999 Macau was under governmental control by Portugal. So everywhere on the street you could see Portugese signs and there was an old city centre, which really gave me a feeling that I was in South-Europe, except for the thousands of Chinese, which you normally do not accouter in these large numbers in the Mediterranean. There was an old fortress there on a mountain with beautiful views over the entire city. It was an interesting sight – the combination of a European town centre, with the enormous casinos in the background.

Friday was the 5th of December – a very special day for us Dutchies! Being a guest at Theo’s, I didn’t have to worry that I would miss this great party. A friend of Theo had arranged a real ‘Sinterklaas’-party, with poems and presents. It was a nice party with around 15 Dutch people. After the poems and presents a real house party broke loose in which I found myself with the other guests dancing and singing in the living room - it totally didn’t feel like I was on the other side of the world. Actually Hong Kong didn’t feel much like China at all. In my view it's an totally international city, where the whole world connects to do business, business and a little more ...... business. Now I’ve returned to Shanghai I feel I’m back in China again. It will only be around 7 more weeks before my first return back to Holland - my God, that scares me, but I’m physically and emotionally ready for this second chapter – let’s make it happen!!!