The official population-count for Shanghai in 2010 was 18.5 million, which makes it China’s largest population centre. Its tentacular spread forms a giant web of roads and high-rise buildings which are shrouded in a thick smog that gets at your throat and eyes…
It was raining this morning as we climbed into a taxi at the airport. Our destination: the international racing circuit on the other side of town, 80km from Pu Dong Airport. Our VW Santana Vista headed directly for the six-lane highway which transects Shanghai. At traffic lights, the seconds remaining before the green is shown are counted down and our driver puts his foot to the floor. Judging by the way he weaves a path through the traffic, perhaps he’s McNish’s Chinese cousin…
Instead of a taxi, we could have taken the Transrapid railway which covers the 30km from Pu Dong to Longyang Road station in less than eight minutes. This magnetic levitation train takes just two minutes to accelerate from standstill to 350kph and has a top speed of 431kph. But even that probably wouldn’t have been as impressive as our ride in the Santana which also seemed to be in levitation much of the time!
After a good hour’s drive, we arrived at last in northwest Shanghai’s rather isolated Jiading district. At last, the circuit’s buildings were in sight, but the hardest job was still to come: locating the press office which we were told was on the ninth floor… We didn’t find it, but we’ll try again tomorrow in order to be up and running in time for the first free practice session which gets under way at 10:35am local time.
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