I spent my last night in Shanghai in my hotel room at the Mandarin Oriental Pudong. Shanghai’s smog had really gotten to me — my lungs were burning — and a 90 minute massage followed by a 90 minute facial had knocked me out. But that was okay. I sat there at the window and watched the boats go by and thought about the quote I’ve seen on a building in Chicago…a building somewhere around Lake & Wells. There’s a gold plaque at street level and it says “With gold, commerce was carried across the sea.”
