Ulises and I spent four days in Shanghai, the city of pirates and opium and forced labor aboard ships. It is a beautiful modern city situated along the Huangpu River with the old colonial section – The Bund – situated along a long promenade next to the river. The far side of the river houses Pudong, which is the skyscraper rich skyline that is often shown in photos of Shanghai. It has a different feel than the rest of China, and you can see how the different colonial sections have merged into the new Shanghai – an odd combination of Europe, China, Japan, and the uber modern.
Here are some highlights from our time in Shanghai –
August 30 -
We spent nearly the whole day wandering for hours through the 6 story, 10 block long walls that line the streets of the Nanjing Road from People’s Park to the Bund. If you thought that the US was all about shopping, you have never been to Asia! There are bronze statues of happy families of shoppers (complete with lots of shopping bags on their arms) at each end of the pedestrian mall, and people are thrilled to have their photos taken with these odd statues to commerce.
We made our way through all the shopping and to the Bund just in time to watch the sun set, and wander through the hordes of people selling roller-skate shoes, kites, wind up toys, and crap that lights up until we got tired, ate a bad pizza and made our way back to the hotel.
August 31-
We struck out to visit The National Museum in the middle of a rainstorm, and were stopped by some young folks who wanted to know if we were from the US. We said yes (despite a nagging desire to say that we were from Canada) and met our new best English Speaking Friends. No really, they were quite nice, two girls and a guy who were all English students and were looking for an opportunity to practice their American English on a couple of native speakers. After chatting for a while, they invited us to have afternoon tea, but given that we were on our way to the free day at the museum, we said thanks and parted ways with our English speaking buddies and got in line to wait for the museum.
After having seen countless museums over the past 5 months, the Shanghai museum, while well organized and with some of the best exhibit explanations in China, it was very furniture focused (which sadly isn’t my cup of tea). The best part about the museum was its exhibit of bronze works, particularly those which featured stylized abstract designs, which are sometimes called tao-tie. They are abstracted animal designs, which look surprisingly like the carvings and tribal imagery of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. It was beautiful, and incredibly impressive for the era.
September 1
I’m standing on top of the what?
Today we decided to do one of the touristiest things we have done to date, we headed to an observation deck in the Pudong area of town. The newly opened Shanghai World Financial Center tower (which Ulises and I refer to as the can / bottle opener building given that it looks exactly like a bottle opener) is not the tallest building in the world (although I think it is cheating to think of antenna’s being counted in height) but it has the highest public observation deck in the world. The total building is 492.3Meters high (about 1,600 Feet or so), the observation deck is on the 95, 97, and 100th floors.
We of course decided to pay our Yuan and go to the 100th floor. It was an interesting experience, somewhat like visiting the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas, as folks dressed in stiff purple futuristic suits and happily guiding us from one dimly lit room with super cool décor, to another dimly lit room with super cool animated décor. I guess when you have to take elevators 100 floors up, you’ve got to stall folks, so there is an elaborate animated sequence that you view before you finally enter the elevator.
For those who are disturbed by heights, I would not recommend a visit to this building, as a matter of fact; you might just lose it upon entry to the elevator. As you pass floors in the elevator, a spiral strobe light shows you how fast you are climbing in elevation – which is horribly disorienting as you climb to the 100th floor some 1,300 feet above the ground.
We stepped out and realized that not only were we ridiculously high up, but that the floors are made of tempered glass, and the ceilings of mirrors. This gives the odd feeling of standing on the air above the city – as the 100th floor is the floor at the top of the “bottle opener” part of the building. It was so cool!
We headed over to the Superbrands Mall to soak in some more of the consumer culture and have lunch at a yummy vegetarian restaurant and marvel that they are opening a Best Buy and a Hooters there (yup that’s right, Hooters). We sluggishly made our way to the metro station to our next stop.
We rounded out our day with a trip to the French Concession to wander through tree lined cobblestone streets that look like they are straight out of Europe, and for a wonderful dinner at a Thai restaurant. We had great intentions to go listen to some jazz at a well-reviewed jazz club, only to find that they were closed and the building gutted (this seems to happen a lot in Shanghai – as two restaurants we tried to visit were also closed). Slightly dejected, but full of Thai food, we called it a day.
September 2
This being our last day in Shanghai, we decided to go and see the Old City. This is the oldest part of the city, the portion of the city to which Chinese were confined during the colonial days. Now it is a mix of hawkers, traditional stores, tourist traps, temples, landmarks, and traditional Chinese architecture.
We hopped in a cab and made it over to the Old City for about 20 Yuan and explored the streets and shops, stopping to have some Pearl Milk Tea (or boba as you may know it). We walked through a modern park packed with families and picnickers and bamboo groves supported with a web of bamboo latticework running parallel to the ground.
We then headed to the ancient gardens of Yuyuan Gardens created in the 1500’s over a period of 18 years by a Ming dynasty family, and rebuilt after suffering damage during several conflicts over the course of the years. The gardens were spectacular, built with ponds overflowing with carp and dotted with statuary and incredible Ming era buildings. The gardens went on and on, with carefully sculpted rock formations and incredible bronzes.
We spent hours wandering throughout the gardens, when we realized that we were pretty hungry, so what better to do than head out to find the best-steamed dumplings in the city. We hopped in line to wait about 30 minutes for some amazingly good crab dumplings, and were yet again subjected to being the photographic subject of many cell phone holding Chinese tourists. In an effort to evade the paparazzi yet again, we decided to go have tea at one of the most famous teahouses in China – the Huzinting Teahouse. It was beautiful, and as many old buildings are, leaning precariously as if it had seen one too many storms. We had some Oolong and Green tea and were presented with a variety of snacks to have with our tea, some tea hard-boiled quail eggs, some pickled plums, and some gelatinous sweets. The quail eggs weren’t too bad, but I must say the food was a little more adventurous than I was counting on.
We finished off our visit to the Old City by catching a ride back with a motorcycle rickshaw driver, thinking that this would be the most economical option to get us back to our side of town, and the metro ride to our evening activity. Turns out that despite a ride through rush hour traffic that I will never forget, the rickshaw driver did not thin our ride should be economical, and charged us 30 Yuan (we thought he said 3). So after expressing our extreme displeasure over being ripped off, we hopped on the metro and headed over to Pudong to try and squeeze in a visit to the aquarium – which was open until 9.
Or that’s what the books said. Turns out the aquarium closes at 6 now, and we were left with our little noses pressed against the window and no cool fish to look at. So we headed to the riverside to watch the nightly parade of advertising boats and illuminated cruise ships, before we got back on the metro and headed back to eat dinner.
So long Shanghai
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