I've just arrived in Shanghai to give a series of talks to publicise The Pool of Unease. I came on the sleeper from Beijing The timing is nice – I left just before 8 in the evening, and arrived in Shanghai at 7.30 in the morning. There are trains leaving Beijing for Shanghai just about every half hour in the evening, so great is the traffic between China's first and second cities. Whereas trains used to be made largely of hard class carriages, the express Beijing-Shanghai trains seem to be made up almost exclusively of soft class carriages, and they are booked solid by China's newly affluent middle class. It costs about 30 pounds each way for a soft class sleeper, with clean bedding, a decent dining car, and endless boiling water for making tea.
So here I am, all checked in before 9 in the morning. I'm staying in the Salvo Hotel, near the Bund, and I'm on (gulp) the 28th floor, from where I can see the boats on the Huangpu River, and the Oriental Pearl tower that stands like a fat-bellied daddy-long-legs over Pudong. If I look down, I can see a maze of old red-tiled roofs, and waves of bicycles and cars in the narrow streets, and then the skyscrapers jutting out and up. It's rather like the view Tom Cruise had while he was swinging between Shanghai's high-rises in Mission Impossible 3.
I cast an eye over the hotel literature. 'Please' I find myself urged, 'deposit your valuables and huge sum of cash in the front desk safe.' Well, I would oblige if I had a huge sum of cash. But how can I possibly choose between the 'fad beverage' on offer in the lobby bar, and the Full Bar on the 31st floor where, 'In the still of the night, when you cling to French window, you will immerse in the fascinating shades within enthralling and florid picture in the Bund.'
I've allowed myself a day either side of the publicity events, to try to get some writing done. I've written the beginning of the next book, but not much more. In theory, a couple of days of intense staring at the screen will create a breakthrough. Next to my bed, there is a switch labeled General Illumination. If you see me clinging to the French window on the 31st floor you'll know it didn't work.