Our hotel in Shanghai was the only hotel in China that provided breakfast free of charge. So this morning Greg and I settled in for filling ourselves up with free Asian breakfast. They had a big buffet full of noodles, dumplings, pork buns (sometimes replaced with custard buns) green beans, stir fried eggplant, fried eggs, all manner of juices, plus ‘chinese coffee’ and tea. The ‘chinese coffee’ apparently tasted like watered down bitter coffee, but at his current state of coffee desperation Greg settled for it.
After breakfast we went on an excursion to buy some of the nut cake we had seen on the nearby bridge for sale the day before. On reaching the bridge we easily found someone willing to sell to us. So enthusiastic in fact that we ended up with a piece so big they needed a cleaver to separate it off. The piece was so large we made the strategic decision to taste it and then return it to our hotel room (where I photographed Greg with it for posterity). Basically it tasted like a giant sweet museli bar – served with lollies on top.
After this Greg and I set off to find the French concession. Apparently a lovely suburb with wide streets and tall trees – and potentially a proper cup of coffee for Greg. We had Lilian write down where we wanted to go in Chinese at breakfast so we thought we were set.
But when we went to get in the taxi out the front of the hotel the taxi driver looked at us as if we were crazy and tried to tell us something in Mandarin. Eventually the hotel staff found someone who could speak English who explained to us that apparently it was within walking distance and drew us a little map that headed back down towards The Bund. So we sent off trying to follow it.
Twenty minutes later we ended up at the other end of The Bund pedestrian area. So we tried to ask a pedestrian roadside person (who are at most of the busy intersections) – who also looked at us like we were crazy and tried to tell us something in Mandarin. As we didn’t have a translator with us we nodded our heads and slowly backed away. We went wandering looking for a bookstore so we could try and acquire a more comprehensive map. Perhaps with street names. But alas we couldn’t find one ( this did however fill in about 45min).
I then formulated a plan. We would go somewhere else – which we knew was a long way away – and when we came back we would get the taxi to drop us off in the French concession. So we jumped in and headed to the temple markets (not sure what the proper name for them way as Lilian had written it down in Chinese).
There was a web of narrow streets lined by traditional Chinese buildings that were filled with shops selling all manner of touristy things – paintings, chopsticks, tea pots, Chinese lanterns etc. There were also wonderful little food stores. We stopped right at the back in a lane that was filled with little street front stores selling food cooked on the spot, and had a wonderful lunch. I had freshly cooked pork dumplings and some vegetable dishes, and Greg chose from the vegetables on offer and had a fried egg on top.
(Greg: I couldn’t work out why people kept greeting my possessions; you walk down the street and all you hear is:
‘Hello bags.’
‘Hello, watch. Hello shoes.’
‘Hello camera.’
Sometimes they would greet my DVDs as well:
‘Hello DVDs’.
Luckily Lilian had taught us how to say No Thank You in Mandarin, and that phrase was deployed regularly.)
After wandering around for awhile we found a coffee store and Greg couldn’t resist the promise of a proper coffee so we had a sit down – only for the coffee to be overpriced and average. So Greg made a resolution not to buy anymore coffee until we made it to Vietnam; the land of strong coffee with condensed milk, according to my parents who visited last year.
I wasn’t feeling too good – so we decided to retire back to our hotel at this point and give up in trying to find the elusive French Concession.
Back at the hotel I then proceed to sleep for three hours – while Greg fiddled on the computer, and enjoyed the use of the free internet in our room. Ahh the joys of having brought our laptop with us.
It turns out three hours sleep was just what I needed. So after this we decided to go and test run the nearby vegetarian restaurant. Which was a good decision. Just for Greg they served free ‘Chinese coffee’, then we ordered chili green beans, ‘Affection’ beef (a soy replication of the original chinese beef dish – but that doesn’t explain the name…), and chive fried pancake bread and some soup. Typically the picture looks like it’s a small meal; what you thought would be an entree bowl of soup turns out to be 12″ round. And that’s what happened here. We feasted like kings. For 50 yuan.
We were feeling a little tired of big cities, especially smog filled big cities, by this point – so we once again headed bacl to our hotel room to prepare for checking out the next day and escaping big cities.
On the way back Greg spotted some people welding on a construction site in the dark – a perfect photo op – so he came back to the hotel got the camera and headed back out. Unfortunately they had realised it was Sunday night and had packed up. So Greg had to settle for a series of ‘glass lifts at night’. One of which is displayed below.
Alice
