Shanghai

Arriving in Shanghai I was pleased to find a complex underground system for the first time since Beijing meaning reliance on taxis and buses wouldn’t be necessary. For the first time I had been too late to book my original hostel choice but had to settle for the Mingtown Etour Youth Hostel (owned by the same company who owned my Suzhou hostel). It was at least in an excellent location next to People’s Square tube station which appears to be the Waterloo of Shanghai, so getting there would be easy enough. This didn’t however stop three locals insisting they accompany me all the way to make sure I didn’t get lost. It’s possible their excitement at being able to help actually slowed me down but I quite enjoyed it. Having left the original three at the exit to People’s Square station, I was almost immediately presented with three new ones with equal excitement except this time, as there was nothing they could help me with, they just invited me to have tea and go to the theatre. Part of me wanted to go with Alex, Kate and Lisa (not their original Chinese names) but I didn’t really fancy lugging my 20kg bag to the theatre and so instead politely declined and pressed on to the hostel. So far a very friendly start to China’s biggest city.

That evening I wandered around the local area to marvel at how amazingly different in was to the quiet canal town I had been in just a few hours ago, where even overpasses are lit in garish neon. I found a restaurant to enjoy my first duck in China. I never worked out how to de-bone it with only chopsticks.

Shanghai is a massive city and with so many things to do I found it hard to plan a route the following day, so instead paid £3 for the open-top bus tour which would take me everywhere and allowed me to jump on and off at interesting places. Shanghai is split into Puxi and Puding, along the Huangpu River, with the later being the financial district with a very impressive skyline including the third tallest building in the world (the World Financial Centre). Puxi is the main district in the city and includes The Bund, an area of historical importance along the Huangpu River, which is where to tour bus headed first as you get to see the famous Pudong skyline. This, of course, is provided Shanghai hasn’t decided to engulf itself in seriously low cloud meaning just the other side of the river is hard enough to see. With a thoroughly disappointed busload, the tour moved on to Yu Gardens where I chose to get out for the first time. The gardens themselves were just more gardens and im starting to question why I keep paying to enter them, but surrounding them was an excellent bazaar with shops selling everything, only slightly lessened by the presence of three Starbucks’.

The bazaar outside Yu Gardens including one of many Starbucks'

Back on the tour bus I progresses to one of Shanghai’s few historical attractions – the first meeting place of the Chinese Communist Party who have been in power since 1949 and are the longest running political party in the world. Chinese museums are always hit or miss as you never know whether there will be any English descriptions but this time I was in luck, so I left the free museum and hour or so later pretty satisfied. Shame it took about an hour to relocate the bus stop afterwards.

For a city expanding at the rate the Shanghai is, they feel it necessary to have a permanent museum entitled the Urban Planning Exhibition which is simply there to show what will be happening to the city in the years to come. Other than a computer animated fly-through of the Shanghai of the future, the highlight was undeniably an amazingly huge scale model of the city. Covering almost the entire second floor, the model showed the full width of Shanghai in amazing detail including all the famous areas but also the expansive suburbs. Thinking about it now, the model was so big that other than the famous areas of the city they could have just made up the rest and I doubt even the locals would notice.

Shanghai scaled down in the Urban Planning Museum

That evening I returned to the hostel to find my Chinese roommate in a particularly giving mood. Those reading this may be aware I’m not a beer drinker and if anyone were to offer me one I would usually politely turn it down. It’s just when you’ve watched someone painful pry a bottle open using their teeth it’s very hard to do anything but except it and just get over it. The same had to go for the entire handful of peanuts he gave me after he’d gone and found me a bin for the shells.

I had been putting off going to the high rise area of the city that is Pudong for as long as possible, so maybe the Shanghai clouds could part and allow me to see the tops of some of the most impressive skyscrapers in Asia. The next day was unfortunately no different and I was seriously wondering when I’d next see the sky. Having done little during the day I spent the evening walking along the Bund taking every opportunity to photograph the skyline over the river when it seemed the clouds were relenting. Having initially walked way beyond it I finally found the ferry terminal to take me across the river, where I was easily entertained by the Pixar short films on offer for the 5 minute trip.



The Pudong skyline looking very impressive even in the clouds
(the Oriental Pearl tower is on the left and the World Finacial Centre is the one half in the clouds just to the right of the centre)

Out of the three considerably higher building which all offer observation decks I actually chose the shortest, the Oriental Pearl Tower, seeing as the other two were still in the clouds. To reach the top I had to pay £15 which was one of the highest ticket prices I’ve had to pay so far. This turned out to be a massive con.

Having squeezed myself into a lift with an entire Chinese tour group I reached the observation deck at about 290 meters for some pretty good views of the city especially of the illuminated Bund on the other side of the river. It turned out my ticket included entry to the deck at 350 meters where I could get away from the tour groups which were each lead by a microphone-using guide. A fairly small enclosed observation deck is no place for several of these tour groups, however it was the higher deck that was the first example of why my more expensive ticket was a con. If a building’s main attraction is its observation deck then don’t make the glass red! On my way down I was made to pass through an arcade where it turns out there’s an incredibly out of place rollercoaster. This too was included in my ticket, so in an effort to make the £15 worth while I gave it a go. Having waited almost 20 minutes, trapped under by metal safety bar, it finally started as the attendant decided that more people were unlikely to join me. Thirty seconds later it was clear nothing was going to justify the £15 and I left the building Shanghai is most famous for.

The Bund as seen from the top of the Oriental Pearl tower

My options for getting back to my side of the river were the cheap ferry I had already taken, the fairly boring subway or the bizarrely named “sightseeing tunnel”. I had read both very good and bad reviews of the tunnel but my intrigue got the better of me and, following the tower I had just left, I ended up wasting a further £5 on it. The tunnel included riding in a glass box along a track with light displays intended to represent different environments. In reality I found myself alone in my cube as a cheesy American pre-recorded voice shouted things like “Magma Volcano” and “Deep Space Vortex” at me while standard 12 volt light bulbs changed colours outside. If you want to experience the sightseeing tunnel but don’t fancy paying to come to Shanghai then a similar experienced can be achieved by standing in your bathroom and flicking the lights on and off very quickly.

I awoke the next day to find, after days of waiting, clear blue skies. I got to enjoy them all the way to the tube station around the corner from the hostel before I was underground and unable to see the sky again until I was at Shanghai train station on my way out the city. Of course from the station I had no chance of a final and, more importantly, clear view of the Pudong skyline. Oh well, Google Image search will have to do.

I was becoming quite the experienced overnight train rider now so found my carriage and top bunk easy enough, where I found I was sharing with an entire Chinese family off on holiday. One of my few purchases in Shanghai was a protective case for my iPod which I put to immediate yet accidental use when I dropped my mp3 player from the top bunk all the way to the floor. The case was a complete success and the iPod remained in full working order. Shame I had already dropped it in Chengdu resulting in a rather large crack. Next stop Guilin...