Tommy says…

In January 2009, I took a one-month trip to Europe, transitting for a few days at each end through China. Not having reliable access to internet, I decided to write my thoughts down – with a pen – in my little black notebook. So here they are, now twice edited and with a travel tip heading each note.

Travel tip #1: Write down travel tips as you think of them; writing them down “later” probably means you’ll forget them.

Some would define a city by a landmark building, a particular view, or, failing all else, a three-letter abbreviation.

For me, a city is first defined by its smell. When the airlock doors open at the airport, the smell of a city impresses itself even before the eye adjusts to the light outside. Whether it’s day or night, and regarldess of the weather, a city’s smell is probably its most indelible character.

In Sydney, it is the smell of a sun-burnt country overlaid with a fresh yet salty hint of the sea.

I don’t know what ingredients make up Shanghai’s odour. At a guess, it’s six parts air-borne pollutants and three parts the muddy East China Sea. To me, however, it is the pregnant hint of an exciting metropolis of 20 million souls.

Shanghai’s growth is incredible – that probably sounds cliched now. Still, I was struck by some surprise even on the fairly short journey from the airport. The futuristic wavy form of the new airport seems to have reproduced itself across the highway – in the form of a second terminal every bit as grand as the first. A maglev train zooms past alongside the highway. A giant, inverted step yramid dominates the skyline to the south – it’s the centrepiece of the 2010 World Expo site. As we ascend the great concrete rings that lead onto Lupu Bridge – Sydney Harbour Bridge magnified in concrete – I spot the new IFC, in the shape of a polygonic bottle opener.

Despite having read about and seen the building in print, I was struck by the way it dominated the Pudong skyline – and dwarfed the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, once the pride of Chinese engineering, now at a mere 284 metres tall (if my Communist-drilled memory serves) a ridiculously disproportional bulbous erection beside the IFC.

The city’s cultural life has also changed. Mandarin is even more dominantly the lingua franca. The person sitting next to you on the bus could be of any nationality. The traditional pancake-and-fried-dough breafast I grew up with is gone, replaced by a myriad of options ranging from bacon and eggs to northern Chinese fried buns – this I found out after an hour of fruitless searching one cold, cold morning.

Some things, though, have not changed. The subway announcement still says “Nexus stop” instead of “Next stop”. There are huge crowds everywhere. When I got up on a ledge to take a photo of the famous crowds on Nanjing Road, I noticed two other photographers doing exactly the same thing.

London, on the other hand, smells like grilled ribs.

Until next time,

Tommy