On the trail of Marco Polo I
There are very conflicting theories at the moment as to the role of Marco Polo and Admiral Zheng He in medieval times in the coming together of the Western European and Chinese cultures, and who discovered who. You could do worse than checking out 1434, by Gavin Menzies, to read some alternative history.
I am now following on the trail of Marco Polo, but of course I have no pretensions of discovering China, rather, we are trying hard in Mestrelab to get China to discover Mnova, so far with a relatively pleasing measure of success. Before I get into matters Mestrelab, though, there are a few really amazing things one finds out on arriving in Shanghai, which is an incredibly modern and buzzing city. I was here last November, and I was really taken by surprise by the speed of the developments in this area of China.
The first incredible thing is the district of Pudong, on the East shore of the Yang-Tze river. This was basically farmland 10 years ago, which is truly incredible when you see it now, as the people of Shanghai have built 12,000 (yes, 12,000!) skyscrapers since then in this new part of town. One of them, the Shanghai World Financial Center, I believe to be the 2nd tallest in the World at present, and many others are hugely imposing and spectacular buildings. The realization that all this has sprung from nowhere in 10 years really gives the newcomer a measure of the power of aspiration of the Chinese society in economic terms.
Santi in Shanghai, with the Pu-Dong skyline behind, last November (2008). Click on the photo to view more from the Shanghai album
The next thing that catches your eye is downtown Shanghai. Buzzing with commercial activity, spectacular with a beautiful (and incredibly contrasting from one shore to the other) skyline, and no end of places for the visitor to go to, great restaurants, exciting nightlife, modern facilities. A true metropolis of the XXI century. Check out a few photos, unfortunately spoilt by me and Chen, by clicking on the photo to the left.
The second incredible thing in Shanghai is the Zhangjiang Hi Tech Area, and in particular what guys over here call Pharma Valley (I guess in a reference to the very notorious Silicon Valley in CA, US) Pharma Valley is a huge sprawl of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies which have sprung up in Pudong in the last 5 years. It takes close on half an hour to cross it in a taxi and, although I have heard different estimates, it would appear that there are between 100,000 and 250,000 chemists and biologists currently working in and around it. For anyone working in this industry, this is a mind boggling number. Of course, for me, marketing software desktop licenses, this is a sleep depriving piece of information! It is in any case fascinating and I am very lucky to have seen it and happy to have visited it. I think anyone working in the pharmaceutical or biotech industries should do so sometime. The visit is so exciting, that I was inspired to start learning Mandarin after last time (I am still working on that, although with very little time which makes progress frustratingly slow)
The good news for Mestrelab is that we already have some customers in Pharma Valley, people like Alputon Inc. and Hutchison MediPharma Limited, as well as a number of Chinese universities (University of Tsinghua, South China Botanic Garden, Institute of Materia Medica Beijing, National Chiao Tung University, Beijing Institute of Chemistry, Fudan University, Chinese University of Hong Kong and the National Defence Medical Center) who are the early adopters of our software. After this visit, I hope to have many more. This week I am going to Shanghai and Beijing, as well as Qingdao. Chen is staying over for nearly a month, and I am sure he will make further progress (for one thing, his Chinese is much better than mine!). We also now have a distribution company working with us, Qingdao Tenlong Weibo Technology Company Ltd. These guys are very professional and hard working, and they will be developing the business for us in China, as they already have a very strong presence in the Chinese chemical R&D market. Qingdao is famous for its beer and its beaches, but maybe there will soon another reason!
I am going to be here for a week, after which I cross the World to go to Brazil (more on that on oncoming posts). I hope to post some photos of the city later in the week and, hopefully, some news on business progress. I may even come up with a little ‘my guide to Shanghai’ assuming I get time to find some good places to visit, eat, drink (not necessarily in that order).
