New planning for New Zealand

Well I was extremely disappointed that I had to cancel my trip (due to some reasons) to New Zealand in January 2008, but today it was agreed on not to bad terms I could reschedule the flight for later in 2008.

So it is now planned (Winter though in New Zealand) end of June en 2 weeks in July.

No San Francisco and Tokio as stop-overs, now both ways recharge in Shanghai (Summer around 30 degrees). I have never been there and will try to plan something on the way to New Zealand.

From Wikipedia:

Shanghai (Chinese: 上海; Pinyin: Shànghǎi; Shanghainese: /zɑ̃'he/; abbreviation: 沪; nickname: 申), situated on the banks of the Yangtze River Delta in East China, is the largest city of the People's Republic of China and the seventh largest in the world.^[4] Widely regarded as the citadel of China's modern economy,
the city also serves as one of the nation's most important cultural,
commercial, financial, industrial and communications centers.
Administratively, Shanghai is a municipality of the People's Republic of China that has province-level status. Also, Shanghai is one of the world's busiest ports, and became the largest cargo port in the world in 2005.^[5]

Originally a fishing town, Shanghai became China's most important city by the twentieth century and was the center of popular culture, intellectual discourse and political intrigue during the Republic of China era. After the communist takeover in 1949,
Shanghai languished due to heavy central government taxation and
cessation of foreign investment, and had many of its supposedly "bourgeois" elements purged. Following the central government's authorization of market-economic redevelopment of Shanghai in 1992, Shanghai has now surpassed early-starters Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and has since led China's economic growth. Some challenges remain for Shanghai at the beginning of the 21st century,
as the city struggles to cope with increased worker migration, a huge
wealth gap, and environmental degradation. Despite these challenges,
Shanghai's skyscrapers and modern lifestyle are often seen as
representing China's recent economic development.

The two Chinese characters in the name "Shanghai" (see left) literally mean "up, on, or above" and "sea". The local Shanghainese pronunciation of Shanghai is /zɑ̃.'he/, while the Standard Mandarin pronunciation in Hanyu Pinyin is Shànghǎi. The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the Song Dynasty (11th century),
at which time there was already a river confluence and a town with this
name in the area. There are disputes as to how the name should be
interpreted, but official local histories have consistently said that
it means "the upper reaches of the sea" (海之上洋).
However, another reading, especially in Mandarin, also suggests the
sense of "go onto the sea," which is consistent with the seaport status
of the city. The more poetic name for Shanghai switches the order of
the two characters, i.e., Haishang (海上),
and is often used for terms related to Shanghainese art and culture. In
the West, Shanghai has also been spelled Schanghai (in German), Sjanghai (in Dutch), Xangai (in Portuguese) and Changhaï (in French), but since the 1990s the Hanyu Pinyin spelling of "Shanghai" has become universal in the West.

Shanghai's abbreviations in Chinese are Hù (沪) and Shēn (申). The former is derived from the ancient name Hu Du (沪渎) of the river now known as Suzhou Creek. The latter is derived from the name of Chunshen Jun (春申君), a nobleman of the Chu Kingdom (楚国) in the 3rd century BC
whose territory included the Shanghai area and has locally been revered
as a hero. Sports teams and newspapers in Shanghai often use the
character Shēn (申) in their names. Shanghai is also commonly called Shēnchéng (申城, "City of Shēn").

The city has had various nicknames in English, including "Paris of
the East", "Queen of the Orient", and even "The Whore of Asia", a
reference to the widespread corruption, vice, drugs, and prostitution
in the 1920s and 1930s.

Because of Shanghai's status as the cultural and economic center of East Asia
for the first half of the twentieth century, it is popularly seen as
the birthplace of everything considered modern in China. It was in
Shanghai, for example, that the first motor car was driven and the
first train tracks and modern sewers were laid. It was also the
intellectual battleground between socialist writers who concentrated on
critical realism (pioneered by Lu Xun and Mao Dun) and the more "bourgeois", more romantic and aesthetically inclined writers (such as Shi Zhecun, Shao Xunmei, Ye Lingfeng, Eileen Chang).

Besides literature, Shanghai was also the birthplace of Chinese cinema & theater. China's first short film, The Difficult Couple (Nanfu Nanqi, 1913), and the country's first fictional feature film, Orphan Rescues Grandfather (Gu'er jiu zuji,
1923) were both produced in Shanghai. These two films were very
influential, and established Shanghai as the center of Chinese
film-making. Shanghai's film industry went on to blossom during the
early Thirties, generating Marilyn Monroe-like stars such as Zhou Xuan. Another film star, Jiang Qing, went on to become Madame Mao Zedong. The talent and passion of Shanghainese filmmakers following World War II and the Communist revolution in China contributed enormously to the development of the Hong Kong film industry.

Many aspects of Shanghainese popular culture ("Shanghainese Pops") were transferred to Hong Kong by the numerous Shanghainese emigrants and refugees after the Communist Revolution. The movie In the Mood for Love (Huayang nianhua) directed by Wong Kar-wai (a native Shanghainese himself) depicts one slice of the displaced Shanghainese community in Hong Kong and the nostalgia for that era, featuring 1940s music by Zhou Xuan.