Absolutely Needed to Look

Over at the trade show. Thinking of the trade war sensitivities walking around looking at all the companies.  Ruminating on whether or not any of these companies second-guessed their attendance.  Are any of them are American?  Are most of them European.  I’m here with an Israeli client.  Business or interest at least, is popping.  Nothing seems to have slowed from this vantage.

My driver is from Anhui.  He’s a young guy.  Buoyant, he likes to talk.  He tells me that lots of the folks in Anhui really Hail from Shandong.  I’ve heard about and understand the great migrations of people from Shandong to Dong Bei (a.k.a. Manchuria), but this Anhui linkage is news to me.  People from Anhui, came from somewhere other than Anhui?  How did that work and when?  He mentions something about a famine, and I consider the horror of the Great Leap Forward.  Is that when he meant?  I’m not sure, but I’m also typing now, and he’s taken the hint and become a bit less buoyant.  I miss the opportunity to confirm things and try to catch up on a great many overdue matters. 

  

I nodded off, a moment ago, just like I hoped to.  Just like I needed to. If I don’t award myself a nap willfully my body will take one at a time of its own choosing.  I’ll be late, but only by five minutes and I text the person now to let him know when I’ll be rolling up.  A young guy, he’s already there, he says, about twenty minutes before we said we’d meet.  I consider this for a moment.  That was his choice. 

This is my third trip back in as many days from the convention center.  The drivers all use the same route, which comes down along the Huangpu from the south, once you’ve crossed back into Puxi.  It’s an interesting view, here upriver from the classic waitan perspective.  The Shanghai Tower seems larger somehow and I reach for my phone’s camera too late.  A bus and then a building obscure the view.  The Gutzlaff Signal Tower (full disclosure, I absolutely needed to look that building name up,) stands alone on the east side of the street, by the waterfront walkway, dwarfed by the buildings on either side.  Up ahead on Fuzhou Road, we make our left turn and sail west past the deco Metropolo buildings that occupy each corner including as you pass Jiangxi Middle Road, one of which is a police station.  Close now.  I’ll be there a few minutes earlier than I’d initially suggested.

Wednesday, 6/12/19