Robert Alon­zo

?News Ed­i­tor Robert Alon­zo re­cent­ly vis­it­ed Chi­na on an in­vi­ta­tion from the Shang­hai and Bei­jing Peo­ple's As­so­ci­a­tion for Friend­ship with For­eign Coun­tries. The fol­low­ing is a brief re­port on the vis­it.

On a cold and breezy night in Shang­hai about three weeks ago, my me­dia col­league Omatie Ly­der, man­ag­ing ed­i­tor of the Dai­ly Ex­press, de­cid­ed that we both ven­ture from the sev­en-star Cen­tral Ho­tel Shang­hai for a walk in the up­scale city. We were the on­ly two T&T ed­i­tors from a team of sev­en, in­vit­ed to Chi­na by the Shang­hai/Bei­jing Peo­ple's As­so­ci­a­tion for Friend­ship with For­eign Coun­tries. The oth­er jour­nal­ists were from Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ar­genti­na. Against the back­drop of the many neo signs from the high-rise fan­cy build­ings along the city's pre­mier shop­ping area known in Eng­lish as the Pedes­tri­an Mall on Nan­jing Road, many Chi­nese were queued up, wait­ing to buy fresh­ly-cooked food from ven­dors ply­ing brisk trade on food carts in the var­i­ous al­leys on the tiled boule­vard which stretch­es 3.4 miles, with brand name stores and known in­ter­na­tion­al eat­ing es­tab­lish­ments. As typ­i­cal Tri­nis, we were cu­ri­ous to find out what so many peo­ple were wait­ing to eat. "Lets take a peek there," Ly­der said. As we ap­proached one of carts, the odour of fresh­ly cooked veg­eta­bles filled the air. It was a cook-up with rice, chick­en, shrimp and steamed buns. At an­oth­er hut, there were fresh­ly made del­i­ca­cies and sauces of­fered for sale by the pound. On an­oth­er al­ley, a va­ri­ety of meals made of fish and pork were on sale.

Meals sold on the streets were found to be quite ex­ot­ic just like in the many posh restau­rants where lunch and din­ner were pro­vid­ed for us dai­ly. The mem­o­ry of hav­ing Chi­nese tea, beers, var­i­ous types of red wine and a Pun­cheon-type rum which the Shang­hai/Bei­jing Peo­ple's As­so­ci­a­tion for Friend­ship with For­eign Coun­tries called "Fire Wa­ter" will def­i­nite­ly re­main in both our minds. Though we are ri­vals and com­peti­tors in the me­dia in­dus­try, both Ly­der and my­self now re­fer to each oth­er as "My Shang­hai Con­nec­tion." The tra­di­tion­al Peking duck is al­so a mouth-wa­ter­ing dish which one can­not re­sist.

World Ex­po

At the Bu­reau of the 2010 World Ex­po Co­or­di­na­tion Cen­tre in bustling Shang­hai, Chi­na, a repli­ca of T&T's flag is proud­ly em­bed­ded on an in­ner wall of the plan­ning cen­tre's pub­lic re­la­tions de­part­ment. It sig­ni­fies that T&T would be among the 200 of­fi­cial coun­tries (in­clud­ing Cari­com coun­tries) tak­ing part in the ex­po­si­tion, themed Bet­ter City, Bet­ter Life. The Chi­nese are def­i­nite­ly proud that their coun­try have won the bid to host World Ex­po 2010. This is ev­i­dent be­cause all the province vis­it­ed, Chi­nese na­tion­als were seen all hyped-up for next year's event. In fact, up to Sep­tem­ber, this year, some more than eight mil­lion tick­ets for the event had al­ready been sold of­fered for sale in March. Pho­tographs, ban­ners, print­ed T-shirts and oth­er para­pher­na­lia, imag­ing the World Ex­po, is no­tice­able on Shang­hai's main road­ways, stores, bill­boards and oth­er pub­lic places. In an in­ter­view at the mas­sive plan­ning com­plex dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to Chi­na, as­sis­tant su­per­vi­sor of con­struc­tion and pro­duc­tion Tony Wu boast­ed that Shang­hai ex­pect­ed 70 mil­lion vis­i­tors to the 184 days event which would take place be­tween May 1 to Oc­to­ber 31, 2010. The site of the event would be lo­cat­ed near the wa­ter­front on both sides of the Huang­pu Riv­er, most­ly be­tween the Nan­pu and Lupu bridges.

?He said apart from coun­try par­tic­i­pa­tion, more than 50 in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions had con­firmed at­ten­dance. Tony, who spoke Eng­lish, said in or­der to pre­pare for the event and con­struct a mul­ti-mil­lion 63-me­tre-high Chi­na Pavil­ion (where com­ple­tion work was al­so apace) along with many oth­er high-rise tow­ers for par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries, a com­mu­ni­ty of just over 18,000 res­i­dents, who lived in Shang­hai's in­ner city for years, had to be re­lo­cat­ed. Some 15,000 con­struc­tion work­ers have been as­signed to the Chi­na Pavil­ion, where the main hub of ac­tiv­i­ties will take place. Al­so 272 fac­to­ries were moved out the area to fa­cil­i­tate the event. The 18,000 res­i­dents, he said, were ei­ther fi­nan­cial­ly com­pen­sat­ed for their homes or giv­en new apart­ments. "Their (the res­i­dents) liv­ing con­di­tions have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved," he said. Ques­tioned about the res­i­dents' pre­vi­ous liv­ing con­di­tions, he said: "They did not have in­di­vid­ual toi­lets in their homes...They now have their own toi­let fa­cil­i­ties." The Per­form­ing Cen­tre, which is al­most com­plet­ed for the event, takes the shape of a UFO. T&T's ex­hi­bi­tion will be housed in a gi­ant-sized build­ing iden­ti­fied Cari­com. That pavil­ion, built on the Ex­po Boule­vard, has al­ready been com­plet­ed. What is in­ter­est­ing is that af­ter the ex­po­si­tion most of these high-rise mil­lion-dol­lar build­ings would be de­mol­ished.

Tony, how­ev­er, said if any par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­try want­ed their build­ing to re­main in Shang­hai, that coun­try would be re­quired to pay the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment an an­nu­al up­keep fee for the build­ing. The ex­hi­bi­tion would show­case ur­ban liv­ing and so­lu­tions to ur­ban prob­lems. Tony said the large halls of the ex­po cen­tre would be large enough to park four jum­bo air­craft. He said ex­po­si­tion or­gan­is­ers were gear­ing up to re­ceive an es­ti­mat­ed 40,000 vis­i­tors to the Chi­na Pavil­ion each day. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has cho­sen a mas­cot named Hai­bo, cre­at­ed from a Chi­nese char­ac­ter, to de­pict the event. Hai­bo, which means Trea­sure of the Sea, em­bod­ies the char­ac­ter of Chi­nese cul­ture.

Vis­it­ing one of largest dai­ly news­pa­pers

In T&T there are three dai­ly news­pa­pers each with an ed­i­to­r­i­al staff of prob­a­bly no more than 100. The three news­pa­pers al­so pro­duce an av­er­age of 100 pages each, on a dai­ly ba­sis. But at Wen Hui Dai­ly News­pa­per in Chi­na, there is an ed­i­to­r­i­al staff of 250. They pro­duce a 16-page pa­per, a star­tling dif­fer­ence to T&T's three dailies. The pa­per is owned by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and its ed­i­tor-in chief is ap­point­ed by the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Vis­it­ing the Wen Hui Dai­ly in Shang­hai was quite in­ter­est­ing. Lu Boakang, the pa­per's se­nior ed­i­tor said al­though the gov­ern­ment owned the pa­per, he worked to­wards pro­duc­ing a bal­anced pa­per. He, too, spoke Eng­lish.

When asked whether the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment had con­trol of the pa­per, he pre­ferred to say that the Gov­ern­ment had an "in­flu­ence" in the pa­per's con­tents. He said al­though the gov­ern­ment had "enor­mous in­flu­ence" with the pa­per's con­tents, he tries to main­tain the pa­per's in­tegri­ty. Lu said the pa­per's dai­ly dis­tri­b­u­tion was 400,000 and press time was 2 am, end­ing two hours af­ter. He said the late 1980s pa­per's dai­ly cir­cu­la­tion used to be an av­er­age of 1.32 mil­lion. Lu said be­cause of the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, the pa­per's ad­ver­tis­ing had dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly, hence the dai­ly cir­cu­la­tion had dropped to 400,000. There are full-time cor­re­spon­dents based in Eu­rope. Its read­er­ship cov­ers gen­er­al read­ers and in­tel­lec­tu­als, main­ly from East Chi­na.

Trav­el­ling in a mag­net­ic train

Have you ever trav­elled in a train trav­el­ling 18 miles in eight min­utes?

That's one of Chi­na's biggest in­vest­ments for its grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 bil­lion. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has a Ma­glev train which was de­signed and built at a cost of ten bil­lion yuan. Trav­el­ling at a de­sign speed of 430km per hour, the train has the ca­pac­i­ty to car­ry 468 pas­sen­gers. It is the on­ly com­mer­cial mag­net­ic train in the world. With no dri­ver, the state-of-the-art train is con­trolled au­to­mat­i­cal­ly through a ra­dio trans­mis­sion sys­tem hooked up to the op­er­a­tion con­trol cen­tre. In an emer­gency, op­er­a­tors at the con­trol cen­tre can stop the train safe­ly. The ra­dio sys­tem has been mea­sured to have no ad­verse ef­fects on car­diac, pace-mak­ers or mag­net­ic cards. The Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (SCG), which con­struct­ed the new­ly-built Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, was re­spon­si­ble for the civ­il en­gi­neer­ing work of the main ma­glev line, its fab­ri­ca­tion, match­ing and set­ting up of the track gird­ers.

?The itin­er­ary in Chi­na in­clud­ed:

�2 Vis­it to the re­cent­ly-built com­put­erised Yang­shan deep-wa­ter Port in Zhe­jiang which cost the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment 35 mil­lion yuan. With 16 berthing spaces, 16 ships can berth at the same time dur­ing the 24-hour op­er­a­tion.

�2 The new Dong­hai Bridge which has a length of 32.5 kilo­me­tres (20.2 miles and con­nects main­land Shang­hai and Yang­shan deep-wa­ter port. Con­struc­tion of the S-shaped bridge took two and a half years and cost ten bil­lion yuan.

�2 Shang­hai In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies where dis­cus­sions fo­cused main­ly on trade be­tween Chi­na and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries.

�2 Shang­hai Ur­ban Plan­ning Ex­hi­bi­tion Cen­tre.

�2 Red Town, a cre­ative in­dus­try park.

�2 Suzhou Mod­ern In­dus­tri­al Park, which com­pris­es in­dus­try and busi­ness­es.

�2 Hu­tong, an an­cient city al­ley in Bei­jing. The com­mu­ni­ty, which is 700 years old, at­tracts hun­dreds of tourists from all parts of the world. Vis­i­tors are tak­en through the al­leys by bi­cy­cle carts.You can eas­i­ly get lost be­cause of the many wind­ing and mud­dy al­leys which lead in­to each oth­er. There are no high-rise build­ings there.

�2 The Great Wall.

�2 For­bid­den City.

�2 Tian An Men Square.

�2 Yu Yuan Gar­den.

�2 Zhu Jai Jiao, a small wa­ter town in Shang­hai.

More In­fo

?T&T's par­tic­i­pa­tion

In a brief in­ter­view at a re­cep­tion host­ed by the Em­bassy of the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na on Wednes­day at Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne said Cab­i­net had not yet tak­en a pos­i­tive de­ci­sion on T&T's par­tic­i­pa­tion for the World Ex­po. The re­cep­tion was to in­tro­duce the new Chi­nese Am­bas­sador to T&T Yang Youm­ing. Browne said cer­tain is­sues need­ed to be ad­dressed be­fore Cab­i­net can make any con­crete de­ci­sion.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, who al­so at­tend­ed the re­cep­tion, said while T&T would take part in the ex­po­si­tion the Gov­ern­ment was al­so look­ing for­ward to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Third Chi­na-Caribbean Eco­nom­ic and Trade Co­op­er­a­tion Fo­rum to be held in the sec­ond half of 2010. But a gov­ern­ment source said T&T was not in agree­ment with the lo­ca­tion of its pavil­ion (Cari­com Pavil­ion) which is al­most four blocks away from the Chi­na Pavil­ion.