São Paulo was my first entry point to Brazil in July 2007. At first, even my travel agent was surprised to hear that I wanted to visit this mega city. It was quite true that the city was huge, polluted, expensive and quite gritty. However, upon exploration, São Paulo is one of the greatest cities I have visited. The city was teaming with life, architecture, museums and diversity. The ethnic diversity is one of the greatest features of this mega city - with the largest Japanese colony outside of Japan and probably the largest Chinatown in Latin America.

Getting around the city is made easy with the efficient Metro. However, the metro is not extensive and does not reach many points of interest. Taxi rides are recommended for places not easily reachable by Metro.

With only one and a half days in this city, I have barely scratched the surface of this interesting city, and there is much more to explore in the future.

With regard to the diversity of Sao Paulo:

The diversity of Sao Paulo is indeed impressive. According to my Fodor’s guidebook, there are approximately six million of Italian descent, 1 million of Middle Eastern descent and 1 million of Japanese descent living in Sao Paulo State. Needless to say, you will encounter Brazilians of all backgrounds in this mega city. I personally encountered a few Brazilians of Spanish descents from Sao Paulo.

At the turn of the 20th century, Brazil was recruiting a lot of immigrants from Europe and Japan to work on the farms and coffee plantations in the Southern part of the country. As a result, roughly a quarter of a million Japanese immigrants settled in Brazil afterwards. Their descendants now form the largest colony of people of Japanese descent outside of Japan. The interesting phenomenon now is that many Japanese Brazilians are now going to Japan to work, forming one of the largest groups of Portuguese speakers in East Asia.

For more information on Japanese Brazilians, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Brazilian

There is an interesting museum on Japanese immigration to Brazil but I never had the chance to go there.

As to Chinese Brazilians, the immigration basically follows the general Chinese Diaspora. There were quite a few Taiwanese immigrants and Macanese immigrants because of the take-over of Hong Kong and Macau by Mainland China. Many Macanese are conversant in both Chinese and Portuguese. In addition, some Chinese people look for overseas for economic opportunities.

For more information on Chinese Brazilians, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Brazilian

Regardless of history, it was very interesting to see Japanese bookstores, Chinese language newspaper, Asian restaurants with Portuguese speaking staff all in one neighbourhood of Liberdade!