Shanghai, China

From Yangshuo we flew north back to Shanghai from where Dick was due to fly out on 6 August to return home. We checked into the Oriental Riverside Hotel in the Pudong new economic zone and spent the afternoon walking amongst the Pudong skyscrapers and along the Huangpu Riverside walkway. The Pudong high-rise is proof that modern architecture can be interesting as well as functional. The current Kings of Pudong are certainly the Jin Mao building (that contains the highest hotel in the world, the Grand Hyatt that stretches from Level 55 to Level 87), and the adjacent Shanghai World Financial Centre building, nicknamed The Magnet, that at 1,600 feet is currently the world’s tallest occupied building. But not for much longer. Due for completion in late 2009, the Burj Dubai will eclipse anything else on the planet by a large margin, at a dizzy 2,700 feet! Even in Pudong, within a year or so The Magnet will be eclipsed by a building going up right next door that judging from the billboard photographs around the building site, can best be described as a humungous blue whirl.

After dark we returned to the riverside to admire the illuminated colonial-era buildings along the Bund across the river, then moved on to the Cloud 9 Bar at the top of the Grand Hyatt, and then the 97th floor of The Magnet next door, to survey the Shanghai night skyline from a perspective that one normally only gets from the seat of an aircraft. We ended the evening with beers in the ballroom of our own hotel where a Chinese singer was crooning to a crowd of about eight. She was quite good – her voice was smoky and her accent added fascination to the renditions. There was only one couple dancing – an enthusiastic older guy and his wife. He appeared to be enjoying himself enormously and he chatted cordially with the singer between songs. But then something happened between him and the singer that caused him to fly into an instant rage and he began shouting angrily before rushing out to get the manager. The manager came and the music stopped while the threesome thrashed out their issues. Then the wife led the man off to his room where he had some cooling off, and quite possibly also a lot of sobering up, to do. It was a humiliating exit for a guy who only a few minutes before had been prancing around masterfully like Fred Astaire but was now being led away like a donkey. We decided to call it a night too.

Thursday morning came, and with it the end of Dick’s time in China. We went with him by taxi to the Pudong International Airport where we said our goodbyes and he disappeared from view through the security checkpoint to begin his long journey back across the Pacific to San Francisco. Dick's a couple of decades older than us but he continues to be a keen traveller with a deep interest in the natural world. We can only hope we have his level of energy and drive in 20 years' time.

Not having the appetite for another ride with the stupidly dangerous taxi drivers who ply the Pudong Airport run, we caught an airport bus back to the hotel where we collected our things and headed on to the Hongqiao domestic airport where we had our own flight to catch, back to the south of China. But bad weather had closed in and all flights out of Hongqiao were delayed, with the result that it was well after the scheduled departure time when Xiamen Airlines Flight MF8506 lifted off from a drenched runway.