Shanghai. The largest city in China – by far – and home to more vehicles than the rest of China combined. Or so we heard.
On the train on the way into Shanghai we did nothing more interesting than laying on our beds chatting or sitting on seats in the ‘hallway’ watching the countryside pass by, ahead of our arrival at 1pm. From there we split up into separate taxis to the Shanghai Yinbo hotel, which our taxi driver drove the wrong way to. So when we arrived we could see the hotel on the street corner but we couldn’t stop there because it was a one way road. We had to turn left and go around the block, then just tell the driver to stop across the intersection.
And somehow our fare was slightly more than everyone else’s (26 yuan compared to 17). It didn’t matter that much as Intrepid paid for all the fares, and anyway, Lilian said that Shanghai is so big that the taxi drivers sometimes get lost. Yet again the hotel room was quite comfortable, but everyone was hungry so we went back downstairs and went next door to a restaurant for lunch ( including sweet potato coated in a toffee like substance that you had to dip in water before eating – it was wonderful), followed by a short walk around the block to find a laundry, during which we walked into one of the most gaudy streets in creation. I think it was called Wu Song Lu. Or if it wasn’t that, it was near there. Anyway, off the first story of every building were hanging either electric or neon signs, which thankfully were turned off during the day. Several places along the street were brothels, in which the ladies sat on couches, in skimpy gear, in the front window, filing their nails, talking about whatever, and looking out at potential customers.
Bizarre.
Meanwhile in between the buildings were tiny laneways running here and there, in which people sat around on chairs, hung washing, or played cards. And in the midst of that lot we found a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. I’m not sure whether the restaurant or the brothels came first but one of them is in the wrong place.
From there we crossed over a little bridge (on which there were numerous people with trollies selling the nut like cake that covered them) and walked through under a freeway and came out on the west bank of the river, known as the Bund. At the North end is a big monument to something or other, at the south end is a construction site where they appear to be fixing up the road, and in between are a lot of people walking back and forth sightseeing, taking pictures, selling all kinds of things, and a vast multitude of flying kites (the kites were actually 10 little kites connected together on a string). The Bund is really just a walkway; about a kilometre long and 10 metres wide. From there you can go into a walkway underneath the road and you come up on Nanjing Rd, which is the main shopping street in Shanghai. Most of what was on sale there was clothes, watches, and style-type things like that, but in between some of these, behind the vast number of people drifting, there was a chopstick shop. And in this chopstick shop there were some very nice chopsticks indeed (although sadly most were out of our budget). We’d learned in the Forbidden City in Beijing that the dragon is often used to symbolised man and the phoenix for woman. And there were sets of four chopsticks in which one pair was embossed with a dragon and one with a phoenix.
After a walk up and down the street and around the place, we went back to the Bund and watched the sun go down, or we would have if we could have seen where in the sky the sun was. So we watched it get back dark, and took photos of the buildings, and had a good time hanging out in Shanghai.
Alice: We were waiting on The Bund for the lamps that lined the shore to come on (Greg wanted to photograph them). Eventually at quarter to six the lamps all lit up. The office buildings all around the water also had there lights on – one shiny golden building even turned into a massive screen to show ads. It was beautiful at night. Although this is possibly just because you couldn’t see the smog. There was also a large boat displaying a giant flat screen with local government ads on it doing circles on the water – and thus we were reminded that we missed the F1 in Shanghai by a forntight or so.
Greg: Lunch was so late and so large that no one really felt like dinner; instead we crowded into one hotel room and consumed the local beer and vodka. Unfortunately we ran out of both, so Adam and I went downstairs to acquire more of both. He thought to put his sandals on but I only had the hotel slippers which were as thin as the story going round that the ‘fog’ in Shanghai was quite bad today. The first shop wanted far too much for Vodka, the next one was half way round the ‘brothel block’, and on the way back we had to hurry across the middle of an intersection, and the slippers nearly came off, and I put my toe through one slipper, and it was frankly a bit of a disaster.
Pedestrian crossings in Shanghai mark where you are most likely to be run over.
But we made it back in one piece, and just before midnight everyone else went out to the bar district and we went to bed.
Greg
