Leaving Shanghai but not so fast

Drove about 1 1/2 hours from our hotel to the second Shanghai airport (Pudong Airport) to catch our flight to Yichang. Interesting architecture at the airport as you will see in the pictures. As we approached the airport it became quite foggy. The departure screens showed all flights either delayed or cancelled. They boarded us anyway and we sat on the tarmac for over 2 hours to allow the backlog of flights to clear before we were allowed to take off. There must have been at least 50 planes waiting for the fog to clear hence the 2 hour wait. This is a massive airport. It will likely be well past midnight before we get on our boat for the next leg of our trip, four day Yangtze River cruise. Overall impression of Shanghai, very modern elitist attitude city. Very beautiful and well manicured. Surprising amount of green space and greenery in a city of 24 million. This is one of their strategies to combat pollution. It is considered as the financial capital of China whereas Beijing is the political capital. In fact there are efforts to discourage/restrict blue collar migration into Shanghai.Read more