Shanghai: My third trans-pacific flight (first 2 Australia) wasn’t any easier than the previous two, 15 hours of thumb twiddling and failed attempts to sleep at an airline deemed generous 70-degree incline. Exhausted, grimy, and uninspired we finally touch down in Shanghai and hop in a hotel shuttle for a one hour ride to the hotel for our 5 day "orientation" (I use that word loosely). Shanghai dwarfs any other major world city I had been to previously. It seemed like ¾ of the shuttle ride was through downtown. I don’t know where it ranks in terms of population density but it has to be near the top of the list, high-rise apartments as far as the eye can see. It was mostly cloudy, come to find out is just the everyday norm for most Chinese
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