Shanghai was a blast. A lot more sophisticated than I imagined but still a city of contrasts. Like most places. The haves and the have nots.
The contrast between old and new was striking. Of course much of the really old stuff was destroyed during Mao’s cultural revolution in the mid 20th century. Unfortunately this city of around 20 million is currently ‘under construction’ for EXPO 2010. Much like Beijing was given an Olympics makeover, EXPO is doing the same for Shanghai. This means the historic and scenic Bund was hidden behind hoardings with the great walk along the water inaccessible. Nevertheless I managed to walk a good five or ten kilometres a day in the hot, humid rain trying as hard as possible to avoid the kilometres of fancy shopping streets with international high prices. Every brand name you’ve ever heard of as well as tons you’ve never heard of were well represented. Starbucks and McDonalds popped up seemingly at every turn in tourist areas. As always the real finds (and some fake ones too) were hidden away in the back streets. I ate the best noodle soup ever in a self-select noodle shop for $1.70. A block away on main street a branded fast-food tourist version cost more like ten or twenty bucks. I had a good mix of exposure starting with a historic society walking tour of the French Concessions, art deco housing and hidden lane houses. This trip allowed me to experience some fantastic Chinese cuisine. My own wanderings allowed me to stumble upon Confucian and Buddhist temples, old style alley houses and everything in between. There were areas where photography was ill advised. Large tracts of inner city land are devoted to the communist party, military and paramilitary. I was reprimanded for shooting some ‘party buildings’ on People’s Square. A pleasant cop tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to open my iPhone’s image store. He then scrolled through with a flick of his finger and told me what to delete.
Who was I to argue?
I asked if it was ‘headquarters’. He just laughed.
I visited electronic malls with five floors of one hundred shops each, all selling similar cameras, computers and the like. Fake iPhones where everywhere, including mini models that Apple hasn’t even made yet! There were also more fake LV bags than there are people in NZ.
The night life was rocking. I can recommend the JZ club, M on the Bund for a meal and Glamour Bar for a glimpse of well-heeled locals and expats. Brown Sugar was another great Jazz club set in the remodelled Xintiandi area. It’s a bit like Auckland’s Chancery & High Street on steroids with Sale Street and Ponsonby Road thrown in for good measure. Uber cool and trendy. We had a big last night at the legendary House of Blues and Jazz with the resident Mike Null Blues Band.
Top class.
One is almost inclined to say “If this is communism, bring it on” but one knows that even though everything appears capitalistically rosy on the surface the old cadre of power holders still bubble under the surface…
There were also ‘optical lanes’ of a dozen or more ‘optical shops’. Again it seemed like everything was the same: Much like our local chains appear to be ‘much the same’ when it comes to frame styles, lenses and deals. Ho-hum. Even upmarket stores and practices seem to be ‘more of the same’ and there are few special frame brands that have something different or unique these days. It seemed like most of the major contact lens brands were present and well promoted as were other regional versions. Optical staff in store branded T-shirts hand out brochures at Metro exits…
The market is of course mind bogglingly massive with an estimated 270 million astigmats alone. Now imagine if each of them purchased a years supply of one day lenses for astigmatism? They’d need 1.97x1011 lenses per year. Yes that’s 197,000,000,000 lenses.
With a rampant myopia epidemic in parts of Asia the numbers are even more staggering. We’re talking trillions of dollars. The production and distribution logistics are gargantuan. It’s hard for us to comprehend, with our combined AUS and NZ populations totalling little more than the number of people in a single city like Shanghai. I guess that’s why they can have five hundred IT shops in one building selling much the same stuff.
Ditto the optical lanes.
We don’t know how lucky we are..?
When one sees the prices of Shanghai apartments one can see why there are so many Chinese buyers pushing up the prices of Auckland’s 1/8th acre suburban properties. Never mind the Pavlova, it must seem like paradise. Our postage stamp urban lots seem spacious in comparison and relatively clean and green, however it seemed that the traffic was no worse than Auckland, sometimes better, albeit a bit more frenetic. Fossil-fuelled motorbike permits are apparently hard to come by, if at all. One thus needs to step off the pavement carefully and remember they drive on the right or risk being taken out by a near silent electric scooter or bike. They drive on the pavements too so you need to keep your wits about you. It certainly makes for a more silent environment and is less sulfuriously malodorous and seemingly less polluted than Bangkok with its crazily smoky tuk tuks.
My presentations went well and were well received as were those of the other presenters. There was simultaneous translation into various Chinese dialects as well as Korean and other languages. We delved into the subjects of one day lenses, astigmatism, myopia control and much else. I found the background research I did for my review on ‘A Decade of Silicone-Hydrogels’ rather interesting. We discussed many such things and a whole lot more in terms of the market, demographics and the upskilling of some diverse markets where some practitioners are apparently not even allowed to use a slit-lamp! We had a good two day meeting and saw some impressive facilities at J&J’s Vision Care Institute.
When it came time to leave Shanghai, the 430km/h Maglev train was a nice fast trip to the airport. One hardly felt the speed. A first class upgrade and a quality four course Chinese meal on Dragon Air made for a nice end to Shanghai and set the tone for Hong Kong. To me Hong Kong seems unchanged from its colonial days and is still a major force in world markets. I did some more walking in sweaty heat and explored the markets and backstreets. CPD lectures, coordinated by TVCI and Hong Kong Society of Professional Optometrists were also well received with a different mix of subjects than in Shanghai.
I had some great food there too.
The opportunity to finally visit Shanghai was fantastic. International speaking is proving to be a great way to see the world and experience different cultures.
Learning, while also teaching seems like a win-win to me.
Research by a leading physician specialising in circulatory disorders, Adnan Qureshi of the Minnesota Stroke Institute, shows that cat owners are 30-40% less likely to suffer a heart attack than your average Joe. One interpretation is that cat ownership is thus around twenty times more effective at preventing heart attacks than statins, which only reduce the risk by 1.4% or thereabouts. Does the fact statins earn pharmaceutical companies around $US10 billion per year have anything to do with them being ‘overprescribed’ to every Tom, Dick and Harry?
Not that I love cats but my wife and daughter do and we’ve had strays find us and take over our house for well over a quarter century.
Pity about the allergies and cat hair all over the place.
I might just get to live longer so I can suffer more years of allergic conjunctivitis and AMD?
I’d walk a mile for a Camel.
Another interesting bit of quasi-medico trivia is that a tiny virus can change thousands of years of Chinese cultural development. Since the SARS virus it is now commonplace in Hong Kong for each diner to have a light and dark set of chopsticks. One uses the dark pair for collecting morsels from communal hotpots and plates while using the lighter coloured pair to eat. This minimise transmission of saliva borne viruses.
I know I promised some cases and industry news this month however only take so much CPD. What with plenty of CE, conferences, extra study and so on we could all use a break after a tough year. I figured a more relaxed optometric travelogue would help set the tone for the forthcoming holidays so many people look forward to. December’s In Contact will feature some interesting apps, abstracts, art, science, websites, video and other zany stuff in the annual Best of the Web.
Jenson Button finally managed to win an F1 World Championship. Together with team mate Barrichello they gave Brawn GP their first constructors championship, the only ‘rookie’ team ever to do so in a debut season. Honda must rue the day they pulled out of F1 at the peak of the economic crisis and sold their team to Brawn for a bargain price. Of course Brawn has done some work on the car and team and now uses a Mercedes engine but the guts of the team was there.
It may well have been Honda’s year had they stuck with it…
