ENR transportation editor Aileen Cho has many travel memories from her decades writing about construction, but there are a few instances that stand out from her many trips to faraway places.
China, 2002
Every trip on ENR is an adventure, even if there’s construction around the corner. But one of the most epic was when I took a road trip with Man-Chung Tang of TY Lin International around 2002. China was just beginning its epic infrastructure boom.
In Nanjing, we visited the third bridge of the Yangtze River. It’s great how, no matter where you are in the world and no matter the language barrier, engineers love to show you their projects. It’s like seeing pictures of their babies. After that, a whole group of us went to a banquet hall for dinner. I (really, ENR) was the guest of honor. Plate after plate passed me by lazy Susan. I had to ask my interpreter what they were.
“Goose feet…duck throat…duck gizzard…” All parts of an animal I’ve never wanted to eat.
“Where’s the rice?” I whispered desperately. “Oh no, that’s for the common meals. This is a special banquet,” he replied.
While everyone was sucking hairy crab guts right off the shells, I settled for some unidentified vegetables. Unfortunately, I noticed that every time I got an engineer’s attention, he raised his glass and said, “Ms. Cho, sheh sheh (a Chinese greeting/toast). And the courtesy told me to download my content simultaneously with it. Unfortunately, I had finally met a type of drink I didn’t like. This “wine” was similar to hydrogen peroxide. I would rather pour it on an open wound than drink it. And he was strong.
Guest of honor unable to eat almost anything, while having to down a disgusting liquor on an almost empty stomach. It was the most excruciating thing ever done in my honor.
We visited Chongqing, the “Pittsburgh” of China with its many, many bridges. I pointed out a bridge under construction to the young engineer accompanying me, and he asked me if I wanted to take a closer look. Of course! When we got there, I saw many workers sitting on the deck, their sneaker feet hanging over the edge, smoking cigarettes. No hats, no boots, no harnesses. It would have given an OSHA inspector a stroke.
The engineer spoke very little English, but he did what any good engineer would do when I said “How long? how high How wide?” He took a piece of paper and drew an outline of the bridge, with numbers.

Photo courtesy of Aileen Cho
Russia, 2003
In the good old days, when engineering firms were flush with cash and eager to publicize their work. Halcrow held a press conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, to show off a flood protection wall that worked a bit like the levers on a pinball machine.
For two days, we encountered the wonders of the Russian bureaucracy. We were supposed to meet some VIP “minister” one afternoon, only to wait hours and then be told he would show up later. Then we were told to fax questions that night.
Halcrow had three young Russian engineers, two men and one woman, in the office. Every morning the journalists greeted us and we responded with frozen silence. It was a really cool project, though. Russian engineers took the lessons learned from the Dutch projects.
We had a big dinner last night. A round of vodka shots and suddenly the three sullen Russian engineers sprang to life. “We are so glad you were here to write about our wonderful project!” they shouted After another shot, I worked up the courage to say, “I’m so glad! We thought you were upset with us!” One of them replied: “Well, we are Russians. We perk up after a couple shots of vodka.”
Germany, China 2000s
In the early 2000s, I was part of a delegation to set up the maglev test track in Bremen, Germany. Transrapid was a collaboration between German and Chinese engineers, although, to hear the latter tell it, they had somehow taken maglev technology and made it their own (the Germans quietly and politely seethed) .
It was a 20 mile test track. After a few minutes, the train reached 100 kilometers per hour, then began to decelerate rapidly since it was such a short distance. But an amazingly smooth ride. It was also fascinating on the trip to see all these little German cobblestone villages, each with their own special beer.
We also attended information sessions in Berlin. By the end of the trip to Germany, my guts couldn’t face another schnitzel or any other authentic heavy German food. It was also white asparagus season, so we had eaten that too for what seemed like every meal. The word for white asparagus in German is “spargel”. I had heard the word so much that at one point I got into a taxi and asked, “Spargel ze English?” instead of “Sprecken ze English?” The taxi driver didn’t look amused. But then, it was hard to tell with the Germans.
Then we went to Pudong [in Shanghai]which was not yet very modern at the time. They were planning to build an initial (eventually the only) maglev leg there. Kevin, the media relations guy who arranged the trip, had booked a room at the Holiday Inn. At that time and place, it was akin to a five-star hotel. I was supposed to be staying at another hotel, which I thought I had booked weeks before (these were the days before booking apps of any kind). When I arrived at the hotel, however, the young woman at the front desk was adamant that my name was nowhere to be found and that there were no rooms (the hotel looked pretty deserted).
Desperate, I called Kevin and asked to meet him. I took a cab to the Holiday Inn where he met me at the bar. I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I came back, he had a haunted look on his face. It turns out that the minute I left, many young Chinese women approached him. I guess they were hoping a western man could get them out of the country and they could “steal” it from me.
A cover band started playing on the “Irish” bar stage. It consisted of all the young Chinese women lip-synching or otherwise strangely and perfectly imitating American performers of pop songs. A couple of them went down to dance among the tables of tourists. I guess they were trying to be seductive, but the looks on their faces as they spun and stomped were either pure boredom, resignation, or gloom.
Wherever I went, walking with the men of the delegation, I received suspicious, disapproving, hostile or jealous looks from the locals. Sometimes they would come up to me and shout at me in Mandarin. I tried to learn the phrase for “I’m American,” but my pronunciation was so atrocious that they thought I was just slow, and yelled at me even slower and louder.
However, it was exciting to see the seeds of what would be a complete high-speed rail system crossing China, even though most of the rest was NOT maglev.

Photo courtesy of Aileen Cho
United Arab Emirates, 2000s
Traveling through the Middle East in the early 2000s was an interesting experience for an Asian American ENR editor. The UAE was still transitioning from an oil-dependent economy to a newly built environment emphasizing tourism and international business. While it was fascinating to see and report on new roads, bridges and buildings rising out of the bleak desert, I was very conscious of every move. Don’t cross your legs during an interview, because showing the soles of your feet was a mistake. Don’t wear anything too “revealing”. Bite your tongue when a native just pushes in front of you online or is otherwise downright rude.
I toured the massive Abu Dhabi airport project that was just getting started: a huge forest of piles rising from the ground. Ginger Evans had recruited a whole pool of American talent in airport construction [ENR’s first female Award of Excellence winner]after Parsons, to temporarily move their families to the United Arab Emirates.
Ginger and I share a hotel room to save money. It saved me in other ways too, because one evening I sat down in the hotel’s small bar for a drink. Interestingly, all the servers and waiters were Asian women. They were well-educated, well-spoken, multi-lingual women who were only there to make a lot of money and then go back to China, the Philippines, etc.
He was chatting happily with them when a native boy, dressed in the traditional white robe and sandals, walked up to the bar. My recent friends gave me warning looks. The guy, cigarette dangling from his mouth, imperiously told them to buy me a drink. Cue increased alarm on their faces. I thanked him, said emphatically that I was only there on business to write about the incredible construction activity of the UAE.
Impatiently, he interrupted, “I want to go to your room. How much?”
I—conservatively dressed, by the way—had to remind myself that I was in HIS world and that he could probably get me thrown in jail.
I forced a smile and told her I was flattered, but that’s not why I was there. He repeated his order. I finally said, honestly, that I was sharing a room with another woman, a VIP from an engineering company, and that she was probably there or would be there.
Close the call.