China

I know we’ve talked about China...but Shanghai is an amazing place. I mean, they are interesting times to be there. Because Shanghai is three times New York, like New York in the 1970s, or even the 1930s. They’re like in 2020s there, building skyscrapers with 90 floors. It’s very exciting in a way, you can feel it in the air – I mean, you don’t need to have a cappuccino to wake you up because the energy there’s just crazy. But obviously that kind of future of sorts comes with other things, and the human rights issues out there I have said enough about, I think. How they’re going to react to the Western World’s interest in them... I don’t know what will happen. But I think having the opportunity to see the East, like Korea too, is very important for political understanding. In some ways, they were trying to be so ahead of anything else.

TheLipster.com, April 10 2008