Last Wednesday was my first morning in Shanghai, and I decided to visit the Oriental Pearl Tower. The Tower is to Shanghai what Big Ben is to London, the Eiffel Tower is to Paris and the Statue of Liberty is to New York. It was my first visit to Shanghai in almost twenty years and my third visit in total but it would turn out to be my most memorable for the wrong reasons.
When I arrived just after its opening time, it was busy but not crowded, I opted for the 299RMB ticket which covered everything. There was a cheaper 199RMB ticket which did not cover the top most floors. The first lift took me half way up and here I was treated to a circular panoramic viewing platform. There was handy Chinese and English description of each building that you looked at in front of you. It was nice view of the Bund and the rather opaque looking HuangPu river. I have been to the Bund before so I skipped going there this time. It’s a credit to the government to keep the heritage buildings intact on the Bund.
As I sat down and put my mobile phone down on a wonky table, disaster struck, it fell on the floor! Normally this would have been no big deal, except the screen went black but I can still hear notifications and even ringing from it. Try as I did, the screen remained dark and I was not able to reboot it. Oh damn!
I decided it was time to cut short my visit and get it repaired. This was easier said than done, instead of taking the lift directly back down, I had to finish the tour by going to the top floor, which had a space exhibition, then I progressively went down the levels. The next one had the scary looking glass walkway where you can directly look down on the pavement below. Then it was to virtual reality display and then finally a historic exhibition of the area. Eventually I made it outside.
Now to find a mobile repair shop, I took a metro for about five stops, got off in a residential area and went inside the local shopping arcade. A repair shop did appear but unfortunately it was closed. The manageress of the little retail unit next door kindly called the repair shop owner for me but the feedback was that he was not able to help anyway.
Feeling stuck, I realized the only solution was to buy a new mobile phone, so it was back into the metro and headed back towards central Shanghai. The shopping mall where I got off luckily had a Xiaomi shop and I bought myself a replacement mobile. Even better the assistant helped me set up Wechat and installed Google Play. Wechat needed one of my contacts to verify me when I logged onto it on the new phone, however I did not remember the wife’s number. Thankfully it allowed me to verify by password, which I remembered. My ordeal was finally over!
In the last ten or so years, China advanced well ahead of everyone else in using mobile technology to the fullest. One example is Wechat, which started off as an instant messaging app, but morphed into a Swiss Army knife App which can use for payment in shops, taxis and public transport. Most retail vendors and taxis only accept mobile payment, cash is hardly used. And then there’s the issue of online maps. Only the metro systems uses tap and go with credit and debit cards. So without a working smartphone in China, life becomes near impossible.
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| Me outside the Oriental Pearl Tower |
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| The view from inside |
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