Shanghai Part 1

Pudong, Shanghai

A few weeks ago, I headed to Shanghai, China for 5 days. The first thing about this trip everyone should know is that the Shang 上 in Shanghai 上海 does not rhyme with hang, it rhymes more with long but with an a.

I left for the airport on Thursday afternoon as soon as my classes were over, taking the cheap way on the MTR. Luckily I had been able to fly out of Terminal 1 of Hong Kong airport. My flight this time was out of Terminal 2 and I thought it would be a similar experience to flying out of smaller terminals in airports other airports I have been in, such as Minneapolis. (Smaller terminal and less services, but less waiting times and such. )t turns out that if you fly out of T2 in Hong Kong it is the worst of all possible situations.  You have to wait longer for the smaller airlines to check in, and then you still have to take inner airport transportation to get to the other terminal. But oh well.

The flight itself was pretty good, although it was delayed 40 minutes.  I got a meal and a window seat without a partner.  I arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport at around 11 pm. Very inconveniently, Shanghai’s public transport shuts down before 11, so my only option to get to my hostel was to take a cab.  The directions from the hostel had warned that you should make sure to go to Shanxi Road not Shaanxi Road. The problem is most Chinese people can’t read letters (pinyin) at all, which is odd because all of the street signs have the names in Chinese and pinyin, so I would think that they would have some idea, but nope. I thought I would be fine though because the taxi driver gave the paper to the taxi coordinator who he said “Ta zhidao yingwen” (he knows English).  That guy told him where to go and we headed off. I knew something was wrong when the price of the taxi was starting to go over the estimate the hostel had had. Well my suspicions were confirmed when he stopped at Shaanxi Road and said “Hao ma?” (ok). This was when I got to try  to tell the guy that it was the wrong street. I tried to accomplish this by pointing at the street sign and saying “Bu  zhe ge” (not this).  Eventually he gave me his phone to call the hostel, and they told him where to go.  Although I speak very little Mandarin knowing the little I do know was helpful, knowing how to say  “I don’t know” and recognizing the word for telephone was especially useful. Thankfully, an hour a half and 80 RMB extra fare after leaving the airport and 80 RMB extra fare, I arrived at the hostel.  It was late, so I called it a night and went to sleep.

The next day I woke up and ate breakfast. My travel partner, Miro, wasn’t arriving until that night, so I had the day to explore by myself.  My first destination was to walk to the historical area, called the Bund, which is across the river from the main skyline of the Pudong district. I wanted to make sure I saw the famous skyline before doing anything because I didn’t want to waste the good day.

Bund from Pudong

 History break. In the Opium Wars, the same wars that resulted in the British possession of Hong Kong, the western powers forced China to open Shanghai up to trade. China was also to give up small areas of land to many foreign powers, where those powers could exist without having to follow China’s laws. These foreign powers also had partial control over the government of Shanghai, through joint government. After WWII and the Japanese occupation of Shanghai all of the foreign governments lost their concessions. While these governments may not have influence in Shanghai anymore, the past presence still has a major effect on the city. The Bund is the area on the western side of the river that was part of the British Concession, and as a result has a lot of British architecture. Other effects are also present throughout the city that were very cool to see. I really liked Shanghai because it is a mixture of three different cultures,  Ancient China, European, and super modern China.

After taking some pictures I took a bus the the Jade Buddha Temple and afterwards the Metro to Longhua Temple. These are the most well known temples in Shanghai, but from my perspective there wasn’t really anything special about them compared to other temples I have seen. The Jade Buddha was cool, just because of the size of the Jade, but still nothing can really beat the giant wooden Buddha I saw in Beijing. Something that is interesting to me is the prevalence of backwards swastikas, which is a Buddhist symbol. That symbol in western culture either forward or backwards brings up only had images with people, but not here. After fulfilling the tourist obligation of temples, I walked around the nearby Longhua Shanghai Martyrs Park.

Pyramid

Cool Sculpture

This park was very nice and had some interesting architecture and sculptures commemorating the Shanghai Martyrs.  This park is the spot that the KMT (the  government overthrown eventually by the CCP) executed many suspected CCP members in 1929. The architecture reminded me a lot of monuments in Washington DC rather than China, especially the one in the picture with the burning flame, (similar to JFK). 

China Pavilion

Between going to the temples, I visited the China Pavillion on the grounds of the 2010 World Expo. The building was very cool both inside and out. It was full of exhibits about how to change the world with better energy and more environmentally friendly habits and all that China is doing towards that goal. I bought my ticket and took the elevator to the top of the building, where I first watched a movie about the great events in China’s past. Surprisingly  (not) they seemed to skip the cultural revolution, great leap forward, and the Tiananmen incident.  I walked through the rest of the building and got to see lots of cool things, such as a forest of electronic “bamboo” that lit up.  One thing that is kind of sad is looking out from the pavilion you can see the former grounds of the Expo. Everything is closed and/or in the process of being shut down. It was a little sad to think of all the cool buildings that used to be there, but were now gone.

After a short break to just enjoy the day and the park, I took the Metro to a shopping center, that had been recommended to me by my friend Alexander who lived in Shanghai all of last summer, for some dinner and to see some more tall buildings.

Miro had not arrived yet, so I headed to Pudong district to go up to the observatory in the Jin Mao Tower. It was very cool to walk around all the tall buildings at night . I got to see what will be the second tallest building in the world, but is currently not very tall as it is under construction. The view at night was very cool from the 88^th floor of the tower, and I got some good pictures after I figured out how to get some good pictures by avoiding the glare. 

View from Jin Mao

 Miro called me when he arrived and we met at the hostel. We headed out briefly to see the skyline at night and get something to eat. Very disappointingly though, everything in Shanghai closes down before 11 pm. The lights were off and almost all the businesses and restaurants were closed and the streets were empty, it was very strange. Eventually though we found a restaurant and had dinner, before going back to the hostel for the night.

The next morning we woke up early and went to People’s Square, which is a large area in middle of the city. There is a park, that also has some rides for small children, as well as a number of museums and government buildings.  On the way there we got to see a large number of groups of locals exercising in the morning. There were groups with swords, groups, with fans, and groups that were just doing regular group exercises. It was a cool sight. There is also a lot of cool modern architecture surrounding People’s Square which I enjoyed viewing.

Morning Exercises

After walking around the park for awhile and getting some breakfast at a stand, Miro and I headed to the free Shanghai Museum.  The Shanghai museum was very similar to the National Palace museum in Taipei, but with not as cool of stuff. They did though have a neat exhibit on money. It is cool to see the different types of money used in the past and some of the bank notes issued by the foreign concessions.  Something about me is still amazed that people accept pieces of paper with ink on them to be worth something, and following the history of that is interesting to me.

Miro wanted to try to find a restaurant that served Dog, so we went back to the hostel for an internet search, then took the metro to the supposed location of the restaurant.  Sadly/possibly happily we were unable to find the restaurant  so instead we went to a Hui restaurant. Hui people are an ethnic minority in China that are oppressed similar to how Tibetans are, but no one really knows about them. They are from the region in China near the middle-east, and speak a dialect of Arabic. The food was very good.

After lunch, we took the Metro back to the bund, where we looked around during the day time followed by taking the ferry across  the river to Pudong district. The ferry ride was very cool and offered a nice view of both sides of the river.  We walked along the river and eventually made it to the base of the Pearl tower.  We looked into the price and considered going for tea at the revolving restaurant, but eventually we just bought a ticket up to the second ball. The coolest part of the entire tower was the glass walkway, a walkway that surrounded the tower, and allowed you to look straight down at the ground. The feeling of height was made even more impressive because the walkway was slightly open to the air, so it even felt like you were outside.  Sadly though, it was both foggy and the glass panels were dirty, so viewing conditions were not ideal, but it was still a great experience.

View through the glass walkway

 After the tower, Miro and I headed to a nearby shopping area where I finally found a Green Bay Packers “official” jersey plus a bike jersey for a very good price. I also got some very “useful” roller skates that strap on to my shoes. Overall a very successful and not very expensive shopping experience.

We had a quick dinner of Hot Pot before we headed back to our hostel to get changed. Then we took the Metro downtown to go to the highest bar in the world, on the 87^th floor of the Jin Mao building.  It is called Cloud 9. It was pretty expensive for a bar, but it was a cool atmosphere to be in. I felt very classy having a drink so high up and in a nice bar.

More to follow…