After about a ninety-minute flight from Xi'an, we landed in Shanghai's Pudong International Airport where a tour bus was waiting for us and our luggage. Also waiting was our local Shanghai tour guide, a charming young woman who went by the name of Maggie. She was knowledgeable about Shanghai and spoke excellent English.
On the way into town from the airport, we saw a high speed "mag-lev" (magnetic levitation) train that the Chinese had put into service in 2004. It runs 19 miles from the airport to a connection at a city subway station. The train was built in Germany, and uses a magnetic field to raise it off its track, thus eliminating friction. Its top speed is over 250 mph.
The Shanghai Maglev Train
Our first stop was at the Shanghai riverfront which is called "The Bund". The name has nothing to do with Germans but is from a word for waterfront used by Indian soldiers who served under the British in Shanghai. This section of Shanghai was once controlled by numerous foreign governments in something called "concessions" given to countries which traded with China. Each country had its area of influence and control in the city. Needless to say the Chinese only gave these "concessions" under duress - which is another way of saying large caliber naval cannon staring you in the face - and the foreign "concessions" are long gone. However, the architecture many of the older buildings in Shanghai still reflects the Western influence of days gone by.
The architecture of the modern buildings in Shanghai is an entirely different matter. It's pure Chinese - modern Chinese, not curvy roof pagodas, and is some of the most modernistic and creative I have ever seen.
Michelle and I on the Bund's riverwalk. Note the modern buildings across the river. I thought the designs were really cool.
Abe and Roz in about the same spot. The river can accommodate deep water ships and runs to the East China Sea making Shanghai China's busiest port. It is also China's largest city (around 23 million people give or take a million)
The scale of Shanghai is incredible. Think of any large bustling modern city you have ever been in and double or triple it. Besides being China's busiest port, it is also the country's commercial and financial center.
Well, after a short stay on the famous Bund, we reboarded our bus and headed to our hotel to check in and relax. The hotel was the "Equatorial" and once again was excellent.
The Hotel Equatorial, Shanghai
The view from our room in Shanghai
That night we were taken to a restaurant for a fairly mediocre meal. The highlight of dinner occurred when a burst of rapid explosions commenced in the alley outside the window of our dining room. Some of our tour group looked like they wanted to take cover, but Michelle and I had heard mass firecrackers before at Chinese New Year in New York so we kind of asked our guide what was being celebrated. It was a wedding. In America the fireworks usually happen at the divorce.
Firecracker string (at a new year festival). I'm pretty sure this is what was going on outside the restaurant.
After dinner, most of us in the tour group had signed up to attend an optional tour to see the world-famous Shanghai acrobatic troop. They were amazing. The young performers (including a little girl of about ten) did stunts that I would have thought impossible if I had not seen them with my own eyes. If anyone is in Shanghai I strongly recommend this show.
On the way into the theater for the acrobats there was some construction. Michelle thought this sign was cute.
The acrobats at the Shanghai Center - this picture does not do them justice, they were incredible.
The acrobatic show lasted about two hours and then we returned to our hotel. Abe, Roz, Michelle and I felt a bit hungry after the not very good dinner so we wandered out of our hotel in search of a late-night snack. Fortunately, we did not have to wander far. Just around the corner from our hotel, we found a wonderful little Vietnamese bar and restaurant. I don't remember what it was called, but we had the best, fresh, made from scratch seafood and vegetable rolls I have ever eaten. In fact, this was some of the best food we were to have while in China. Afterward, Abe insisted on taking my picture in front of a nearby massage parlor - no, we didn't go into it!
The next day, after an excellent buffet breakfast, it was off to the Shanghai Museum.
The Shanghai Museum with one of the city's many modern skyscrapers in the background
One of a number of stone sculptures in front of the museum
The museum was very good. It gave a nice overview of Chinese art and history. There was an excellent gallery of Chinese coins from ancient times. Interestingly, traditional Chinese coins had holes in the center of them so they could be carried on a string.
There was also a gallery of art from the many different ethnic minorities in China. I thought this was a nice contrast from the traditional Han Chinese art and culture we had been seeing. The "Han" being the basic core people of China who make up the vast majority of the inhabitants.
A canoe made by one of China's ethnic minorities. Interestingly, it reminds me of the canoes made by Native Indians in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
There was also a very nice gallery of traditional Chinese furniture. In an interesting side note, driving around Shanghai, we passed an Ikea store. Maggie our local guide said that in decorating her home, she preferred the modern clean-lined Ikea furniture, while her husband preferred the traditional ornate Chinese style - so they have one room of each.
Some traditional furniture in the museum gallery.
We spent most of the morning in the Shanghai museum and even then did not see everything there was to see. Finally, we boarded our bus and were taken to lunch and a silk factory.
On our way to lunch we passed this building. It is a Shanghai custom to dry your clothes by hanging them on poles outside your window. Maggie called it the "Shanghai Laundry Festival"
Lunch was a Mongolian Barbecue. This is a kind of buffet where you load a plate up with raw food and bring it to a chef who cooks it on a large round metal griddle. Supposedly the Mongolian warriors used to cook food on their round metal shields. Anyway, the food was good - as good as any Mongolian Barbecue I've had in New Jersey (and there are many in our fair state) but the line to get your food and get it cooked was ridiculous. I think every Western tourist in Shanghai was there that day.
Afterward, we were taken to a silk factory. Now the purpose of this visit, like the cultured pearl factory, the jade factory, the cloisonne factory, and the lacquered wood factory they also took us to over the course of the trip, was to get us to buy stuff. Unlike the other places, however, we: a. actually found it interesting and b. actually bought something.
Silk comes from silkworms - duh! But, I did not realize they were actually the larvae of a moth which spin cocoons and it is from these cocoons that the silk is derived. The cocoons are actually spun of a single filament of silk many hundreds of feet long. The filament is unwound and spun into a silk thread which is then woven into cloth.
A machine which pulls the filament from six cocoons at a time to make one usable silk thread. The cocoons are the white things at the bottom.
We bought something which Michelle called a duvet and I would call a comforter for our king-size bed. It is a plain cotton cover filled with pulled silk which comes from cocoons which cannot be used for thread. It is extremely light and extremely warm.
That afternoon, we were taken to a place called the Yuyuan Garden in the old section of Shanghai. It was quite pretty.
An archway in the Yuyuan garden
A mass of goldfish in the garden lake
The garden was next to another "Chinatown" old fashioned shopping district. We spent the afternoon there haggling and bargaining. One thing I wanted to get while in China was a set of nice matched chopsticks with brass tips. I found a set in a small shop and Michelle proceeded to commence beating down the lady shopkeeper on the price. By the end of the haggle, they were both laughing and the woman informed Michelle that she was the best bargainer she had in the shop all day. We ended up paying about half the asking price for the chopsticks.
A crowded street in the traditional shopping district in Shanghai
That night, our last in China, we were supposed to attend a "farewell dinner" provided by the tour company. Well, we had not been really happy with most of the dinners provided by the tour, so we decided that on the last night we (i.e. Abe, Roz, Alex, Monica, Michelle and I) were going to strike off on our own and get us some good Chinese seafood. Hilarity ensued.
Michelle asked the hotel concierge for the name/location of a good Chinese seafood restaurant. He proceeded to write down the name of a place in Chinese on a couple of slips of paper and summoned us two cabs, handing one slip to each (non-English speaking) driver. After a 40-minute mad dash through Shanghai rush hour traffic the cab drivers deposited us in front of a large, restaurantish-looking building and waved us toward it. I should add that cab fares in China are very inexpensive - this ride cost us the equivalent of about three bucks.
Well we walked into this place to find a very large room containing two things: a series of shelves and tables filling one half of the hall which were covered with dishes with raw food artfully arranged on them which were apparently samples of the dishes served, complete with Chinese (but not English) labels, and, filling the entire length of the other half of the space, a series of tanks, containing live and swimming sea creatures of every variety including many I had never seen before.
And no one in sight spoke a word of English.
Well... I knew that Chinese people were fanatics about fresh seafood and had been in restaurants in Chinatown New York where you could order fresh fish from a tank - but I'd never seen anything like this. Also, there was nothing like a restaurant with tables, chairs waiters etc. in sight. This was somewhat troubling. Had we been deposited at a fish store?
On top of everything else, a young lady (again non-English speaking) was following us around with a clipboard and we got the impression that she was there to record our selections when we made them. At this point, Michelle started to get the giggles and then, Monica spotted a fish swimming in one of the tanks and pointed at it to say that it looked good. Instantly, a gentleman appeared with a net and scooped the fish out of the tank and into a plastic bag where it flopped wildly. At this point, Michelle started to totally crack up and shouted "I'M NOT DOING TAKEOUT".
Eventually, Abe found a young woman in another part of the establishment who spoke at least a little limited English. She managed to convey to us that we were to select our meals here, and then we would take an elevator to the third floor where it would be served to us in an actual restaurant setting.
The upshot was, we selected around six dishes including Monica's "take out" fish, and headed upstairs. Some more confusion ensued with our beverage orders, but since we did know the words for tea, water, and, most importantly, beer, that got sorted out.
Some of the dishes on display. The place was called the Hartung Seafood Center by the way
The fish tanks. There were everything from lobsters to razor clams to sea cucumbers (ugly looking things) and even live turtles and frogs
The meal, when it came, was excellent. There were fried dumplings which were so light you could see through them. There was excellent shrimp tempura. Monica's fish selection was steamed and served whole. She found that it was so tender that she had only to pull its tail and the backbone and all its other bones pulled right out leaving a perfectly filleted fish which was delicious. The final course, in accordance with Chinese custom, was soup. In this case it was a seafood soup with tiny, gnocchi-like dumplings. The whole meal was definitely the best we had in China and only cost us about $20 per person.
Anyway, it was a good way to end the trip and pretty funny too. I think the fact that we all maintained a good attitude regarding the language barrier and basically laughed at ourselves rather than turning into "Ugly Americans" probably made things go well. I'm sure the restaurant staff had a good laugh on us too.
Well, that was Shanghai. Next time I'll do a wrap up of the trip and talk about an"Old China Hand" we met on the plane going home.
