Edie Lush

Nǐ hǎo Shanghai

Happily landed in Shanghai yesterday and am freshly back from the inaugural event of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network – ‘Take Your Own Path Through Global Tech Strategies’ event held at the Glamour Bar at M on the Bund.

It’ll be a jam packed couple of days starting off with breakfast with Dell’s PH Ferrand in the morning but before I head to bed I thought I would jot down one interesting conversation I had about women in China. From 1949 women were treated equally under communism and you’re almost as likely to see a female doctor or engineer as you are a male one. The impact of the ‘one child’ policy means that women can go back to work much sooner than in other parts of the world where women take quite a few years out of full time work to look after kids. There is also a lot of family help around – that one child has four doting grandparents to help with the child rearing. I learned that it is written into the Chinese ‘constitution’ that women can breastfeed at work. but that with economic growth things are changing a bit. There is growing family pressure to get married, have a baby and quit working that didn’t exist before.

More tomorrow. From the tourist point of view here are a few observations.

1. I know, I know, we all know China is wildly building. I even just wrote about British architects and engineers’ role in the process in the last Spectator Business. But when you see the old stone buildings are being ripped down with enormous great skyscrapers going up in their place it certainly makes you stop and consider the Chinese economic miracle.

2. A Chinese massage is a great cure for jet lag. Walking around the People’s Park trying to find the exit in 90 degree heat is not.

3. The traffic is under the ‘emerging’ part of the ‘emerging market’ side of China. I’m not sure whether scooters / motorcycles count as bicycles or cars under the traffic laws here but they didn’t seem to be behaving any of the known rules of the road.