Shanghai Literary Festival

March was a busy month for us, we attended the literary festival, restaurant week and we had to move from the 28th floor to the 17th floor of our building, more on this later.  As usual  I am weeks behind on my blog, the literary festival began on March 3rd and I am now just getting around to posting the pictures and reporting the event.   We have never attended the event and I thought that this could be a nice change of pace for us. So off we went on a Saturday afternoon to learn something new. 

The venue was at The Glamour Bar on the Bund.  The Bund is on the waterfront of Shanghai and there are many famous and historical buildings facing the Huangpu River.   The famous Peace Hotel, is located on The Bund and you can read about it here:  http://www.surpriseshanghai.blogspot.com/2010/10/drinks-at-peace-hotel.html. 

We went to hear Mr. Arvind Subramanian speak about China becoming the next Super Power. He has written a book about it in English and as it is favorable to the Chinese point of view and it supports the theory that China will be the number one super power it will be published in Chinese as well.  He told us it will be published in Chinese after the government vets it, edits it and makes sure it is completely without a negative comment against China. I am not sure why he would want his book published as his thoughts will be changed but I guess it's all about the money and the honor of having some of your ideas spread in a controlled society. It was fairly interesting but we didn't learn anything new, just a confirmation of what we suspected.    I suppose if you don't live here you don't have the same understanding of the power house that China is, but our US leaders know and try to manage it the best they can without upsetting the citizens.

Although the festival was a week long I did not see any other lectures listed that I was interested in attending.  Matt Groenig  the Simpson's cartoon creator was here but the Simpson's never did much for me and I probably have only watched a handful of episodes in the past 10 years.   Next up - restaurant week.