I am startled from my reverie by the crackle of the airplane speakers. They announce that our descent to Shanghai had begun. As the eleven-hour flight comes to an end I look through the window to see a limitless sky of unblemished, pre-dawn pink. As my eyes adjust from the light of the cabin I just make out below, mountaintops, dark shapes emerging through pale valley mists. An ambiguous landscape apparently devoid of human presence but fluid due to the motion of our plane. The sun fails to rise as we descend, so that time itself goes into slow motion. The space, the time, the empty abstract forms; it seems for a little we are inside an ancient Chinese painting of uncertain perspective.