Back in Beijing after three days in Shanghai. I think any comparative posts on the two cities would be quite ridiculous given all the ink that has been spilled on that subject over the years by others.

However, since I rarely get down to Shanghai, it's worth mentioning the following:

1) The weather this past weekend in Shanghai was awful, and the cold (yet dry) weather up here is more than welcome.

2) All the financial geeks with their Blackberries and dark suits that were attending the UBS conference at Jin Mao were polite but annoying.

3) Hongqiao airport still sucks and Pudong airport is still wonderful in comparison. I rode the Maglev for the first time – my wife thought it wasn't that fast and was somewhat disappointed. I'm not sure what she was expecting.

4) I ate great cheap baozi at the usual food behemoth on Nanjing Lu, and truly deplorable and quite expensive Italian food at Xin Tian Di. Barf. We had a decent Chilean Merlot, however.

5) Spent half of my vacation day yesterday visiting the DLA Piper Shanghai office – nice location in the BOC building in Pudong.

Normal blogging to commence tomorrow.