Shanghai Surprise!

After a hectic time in Beijing, and a drama buying our train ticket to Shanghai earlier in that week, we finally boarded the train to Shanghai. We’d been happy to get a slower, cheaper train, but as a result of lots of confusion at the train station we had ended up with the super-fast train – going from Beijing to Shanghai in less than five hours! Check the map – that is a LONG way. (Compare that to our next train ride, for a fraction of the distance, but as it went through the mountains it took 12 hours!) The train was pretty smooth, and we managed to watch the finale to series 3 of Fringe as we cruised along (scenery would have been nice but all the blinds were down as it was so bright!).

Shanghai had a great feel to it – we instantly felt relaxed there. That was probably helped by the excellent hostel we stayed at – another YHA (Youth Hostelling Association) place, which seems to be a big thing here. It’s great staying at YHAs as they have a recognisable symbol that is usually placed in a key position at each hostel so you can’t miss them too easily! The food at the Shanghai YHA (AKA the Blue Mountain Luhan hostel) was amazing after a busy day, so we often ate there while relaxing in the common room. 

There was also plenty of good food to be found elsewhere – on day one we spied a great bakery that kept us fuelled for our days out, and one day we even found some curry buns that Bradley fell in love with from a hole-in-the-wall style street vendor – we’ll be looking out for those in China as we move about!

On our first full day in Shanghai, we walked along the Bund, which is essentially a riverside promenade. As well as all the boats trekking along the waterways, we saw some great buildings on both sides of the water – one side more modern than the other, with an enormous TV tower called the Oriental Pearl building striking a garish note on one side of the river, while old 30s architecture lines the other side, with more modern buildings starting to fill in the gaps. 

 

The tallest building in Shanghai, the Shanghai World Financial Centre, is a blue-lit building with a strange hole in the top (reminds me of my office keycard – or a trendy handbag). 

As you’ll see from the pics, the skyline is grand on both sides of the Huangpu river, and the pace of development in Shanghai (it’s not short of a crane or two) mean it will continue to evolve for some time.

 

Next stop was People’s Square, and the Shanghai Museum. After getting lost in the gardens around People’s Square, we finally tracked it down and found the beautiful building that housed the Shanghai Museum. Here, we found a huge collection of bronze-age cooking implements and vessels, every possible thing you can think of crafted in Jade, and some incredible Chinese calligraphy.

It is a fascinating if exhausting Museum, and spills out plenty of China’s history in bite-size, understandable pieces. It was also the perfect thing to do to escape the heat outside – it must have been at least 34 degrees and counting! We also encountered another example of bizarre behaviour toward English people – a man claiming to be a tour guide/translator asked us if we wanted a tour, and when we politely declined, he asked if we were carrying any English coins he could have! Naturally the answer was no, as the last thing we needed in the middle of Shanghai was a pocket full of coppers, but we’re sure there was some kind of scam underlying his interest, as he seemed to be scouting for non-Chinese visitors. But that could just be our paranoid minds at work, as we’ve had to become pretty hardy to bizarre questions and people trying to take advantage of the lack of Chinese we speak… saying that, generally we’re just being asked to guest-star in Chinese holiday snaps, and we’ve met plenty of helpful people too, so it’s not all about being on guard at all times!

With the heat and the intensity of spending several hours in the Museum, we decided to take it easy that night with a few beer back at the hostel (German Weifsbier, nice!) and a good film (Kill Bill Vol. 1). Sehr gut!

 

 The next day we headed out to explore the French concession for some renowned shopping experiences (which would be fine if we had some cash, or anywhere to hoard our shopping!)) but spent most of our time there in the shopping alley of Tianzifang.

 

 This is essentially a warren of tiny alleyways, filled with boutiquey shops selling lots of tourist knick-knacks plus some genuine Chinese art and tasty food. I succumbed to buying a fan to combat the heat, and we dived out through a back-street to find the Propaganda Art Museum.

We’d been really looking forward to seeing this, a collection of propaganda art since WW2 covering the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward and even the Vietnam war. The museum is very well hidden, buried in a basement in a normal looking apartment building (so normal that we were questioning whether the instructions for reaching it, handed to us by a man near the building, might be suspicious somehow!) and heading into the basement of ‘building 2’ just seemed like the worst idea (especially as we couldn’t see anybody around and it was in a back alley). But when we did get down there and sure enough there was a museum, we found it to be the most interesting and enlightening thing we had seen in Shanghai. The posters have all been held together as a collection despite the fact that many of the original posters have now been destroyed, and because of the location I’m wondering if it’s the kind of collection that wouldn’t find its way into an official government museum…

We finished the day by visiting the Yuyuan Gardens area, where we found a hectic, nightmare of a bazaar. It was the most horrendous tourist trap, but nearby were some of the Old Town roads, which made a much more interesting walk. We think we missed some of the old and charming bits, but it was a great improvement on the bazaar! We did however find a massive pool filled with Koi carp and turtles, which was the highlight of the area. Pretty hot for turtles, though they had plenty of shade! There was a walkway across the pool which was very popular with visitors and was a bit overwhelming, but on a quiet day it would be an even lovelier place to spend some time.

Over the river, at the foot of the Oriental Pearl, we took our last glance across the water to the older riverside, considered going up the tower (either the Oriental Pearl or the Financial Tower) but decided this would be a bit of an indulgence so made do with some photos of the view from another perspective.

We made our way back to our hostel to collect our bags and brave the night train to Huangshan (the aforementioned ‘short’ journey!). After arriving at the station only to find that the crazy queuing system for trains means that the layout is never as straightforward as you’d expect, we boarded our train and settled in for a semi-comfortable sleep. To Huangshan, the misty mountains of China!

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