A reporter from German car magazine auto, motor + sport recently went to Shanghai in advance of the 2010 Expo.

The article informs us more about the prejudices of a modern German car journalist than it does about the city.

Here are the main points:

• There is a (German-designed) Transrapid maglev from Pudong airport to the main railway station
  
• It is very, very difficult to get a taxi at the station. There are 45,000 taxi drivers. Two share a taxi (typically a green Santana) for 12 hours a day each. They can keep one third of the fare, but pay for fuel out of this.
  
• There are many old designs of car on the road. So old, that the poor drivers have to do without chunky plastic dashboards. (he actually writes this).
  
• The traffic is very aggressive and hectic.
  
• The Expo exhibition ground on the Huangpu (does that mean River of Pu?) has been cleared of 18,000 families.
  

Two beautiful places are Suzhou:



and the West Lake in Hangzhou, 50km and two hours away along a toll mototway: