Maglev

I’m back on the road. Arrived in Shanghai yesterday and then left this morning to catch a 5 hour flight to Singapore for a meeting tomorrow. (No delays. Singapore Airlines is terrific.)

Since I only had one bag and some extra time, I decided to take the subway to the Maglev train that goes to the airport.

The Maglev train is a typical state-sponsored boondoggle – it cost a zillion dollars to build and goes from the airport to nowhere-in-particular way on the other side of town. The Chinese government contracted Siemens to build it so they could reverse engineer it and co-opt the technology – typical of the information “sharing” agreements that some foreign companies get mired in here.

That said, it is the world’s fastest commercial train – so I had to give it a go.

My experience? It’s a really, really, really fast train (over 460 kph.)

I made it to the airport early enough to have lunch and call my friend Jill in LA. She said she was in the kitchen making something called “Jilly Beans.” She described it as some kind of pickled beans – reportedly really easy to make. I will let everyone know when Jilly Beans debut in Shanghai.