As we approached Siberia the land obviously changed, I caught landfall below:



The below pictures are various areas of Siberia.  As I earlier suspected, it's bleak.  Bleak.  BLEAK.  At least this part of it.


Here there's a pretty large river, completely frozen.


More similar landscape, a different river.


Further on it's more mountainous but still pretty bleak.


I decided to get some sleep so I was out for a couple of hours, then I arose over China, about 90 minutes from landing.  Plus they decided to feed us again.


My first view of China - out here it's mostly farmland but there is industry and the infrastructure is quite built out.


In this river you'll see some darker spots, these are good sized ships carrying containers.

I said they fed us again, we were in first class, which only had 12 seats.  Here's what it looked like.  They fed us well, and the seats lay down flat.

On approach to Shanghai Pu Dong airport, the industry is obvious, but there is still plenty of farm activity.


The airport is expanding rapidly, here's an entire new terminal that looks about ready for occupancy.

We got through customs just fine, three forms: one medical asking about any existing health conditions, an entry form for customs, and a baggage declaration form. Time from exiting the plane to meeting our driver in the terminal: 1 hour.  Any advantage we had in getting off first class was eliminated by the fact that our baggage was last off the plane.  But at least Shanghai was welcoming:

We had a 2+ hour drive to Hangzhou, a city 200km away and where our first office visit was.  The whole drive was all highways like we're used to in the U.S. and was mostly built up the whole way.  Blocks of high-rise apartments that looked quite nice:

A sign that was trying to teach us some Chinese?  It didn't help.




We arrived about 8pm and I stayed up watching CNN, BBC World News and American Beauty on a movie channel until about 9.  I slept until about 3, woke up for about a half hour and went back to sleep until 6.  I feel pretty adjusted to the time zone.  Bob didn't fare so well... 

That's it for our arrival.  Tomorrow, some activities in Hangzhou.