Exploring Shanghai

It was the last day of my vacation, and after an exhausting day in Shaoxing, I wanted to relax and do as little as possible. I took a taxi down to the northwestern part of the lake, where they have one of the most beautiful parks in China. It really was stunning, and I walked around for a few hours, just admiring the view. It had even stopped raining, so it was a beautiful autumn day in Hangzhou.

One of the things I like about these parks, is how curvy everything is. It looks like all shapes are rounded and dynamic, no straight square patterns like we use back home. It really gives the garden a quiet and relaxing mood.

Another thing is the bridges, I really love that. I always liked water, as in lakes and rivers, and these canals in the park with their beautiful bridges make the journey through the park very interesting. every island had a slightly different mood too, as different trees and plants were used. The variations are staggering, compared to the 3-4 different tree types I usually see 🙂

In the evening I met up with Kelly, and we went to a chinese fast food restaurant. That was weird but actually very good. Think burger king, but with chinese food! After that we went to Jamaica Coffee in the tourist-friendly Xihu Tiandi district, for coffee and a couple of drinks.

Hangzhou was a beautiful city, very tourist-friendly and absolurely lovely to just walk around in. I’d love to come back here in the summer sometime, but still I’m happy that there were few crowds and that I got to experience the tranquility of the lake.The only problem in this city is the taxis, especially at rush hour, and especially since there is basically no other option. Getting stuck waiting for a cab for 30 minutes really sucks.

Getting home from Hangzhou turned out to be a stressfull event. The train I wanted to take to Shanghai was cancelled, and the next one was 30 minutes late. So I came to Shanghai 1 hour late, and suddenly it was rush hour. I had to drop the tube and train combination, and had a taxi take me directly to the airport. The driver drove like a god, using all three lanes and blazing past all other cars, and we made it to the airport 13 minutes before check-in was to close. However,  when I got to the counter, they told me that my flight was cancelled!

There were some strikes in Finair, so I had to get a different flight, and was booked to KLM through Amsterdam. That really sucked, both because KLM is way below Finair in quality (no in-flight entertainment), and because the flight is longer (11 hours compared to 9 hours to Helsinki). And I missed my flight from Oslo to Bodø, and had to get a new ticket from Norwegian. Hope I’ll get that covered by my travel insurance.

But anyway, I’m glad to finally be home, after a long journey. Nice to sleep in my own bed and get to meet my friends again.

Today was my excursion out of Hangzhou, I wanted to see one of the smaller towns in the area. I had some trouble navigating, but in the end I found my way to the east bus station, and jumped on a bus to Shaoxing a smaller riverside town of only 4.3 million people.

Once again I had trouble with the taxis, even if I pointed on the map of where I wanted to go, or the chinese words for the city’s main attractions written in the guide, the 2 first drivers would chase me out of the car. Fortunately, a nice man in the taxi line spoke a bit of english, and asked me to show him where I wanted to go. He then spoke to the next driver, which nodded and brought me to the city center.

I found a beautiful pagoda in the park, and I really liked the contrast between this ancient structure and the modern concert hall right behind it.

Shaoxing was a bit tough to master, as all signs were only in Chinese, and most people did not speak English. I eventually found my way north, and walked through a less developed part of town, with pedestrian streets, lined with small shops.

I found a hairdresser with only one chair, smoking in his doorway, a guy making cooking pots out of sheet metal (with a small hammer) and a few street food vendors, with a open-air kitchen in the street, one table and 4 people sitting around eating soup.

In between the shops, I’d see mysterious open doorways, with larger areas inside, filled with people. I peered into one, it looked like a teahouse of sorts, because there was a teapot on every table. But I did not figure out how it worked, because there were no signs anywhere, and I could not figure out who worked there and who were guests. So I wandered on, toward the leafy hill to the north.

I bought a pair of gloves in one of the shops, and I think I might have frightened the shopkeeper. She came up to me from behind, talking in Chinese. When I turned around, she literally took a step back and did the “no” hand movement. I pointed at the gloves, and did a “money” hand movement, and she responded with the chinese sign for “6”, which is the pinky and thumb fingers extended, other fingers closed. I took out 6 yuen from my pocket and gave her, probably her easiest sale of the day.

On my way up the street, I passed a public bathroom, and entered despite hearing some voices inside. One of the walls were covered in sheet metal, which formed a standard urinal. A man was standing there, and talking over his shoulder to a guy in the stalls behind him. I saw a man’s head peek out of the stall, he was talking to his friend while squatting over the hole in the floor. I just found that situation quite unusual, I don’t think I’d ever take a dump while squatting and leaving the door open.

At the end of the street, I encountered the Jiezhu Temple, and I heard chanting inside.

Cautiously, i walked toward the entrance, and peeked inside. There was a ceremony taking place. I saw 6 monks standing and chanting on either side of the room, they were in red and orange traditional suits. In the middle of the room there were about 15 people in normal clothes, and as I came in the door, they were walking in procession towards an altar. A woman in the rear of the group noticed that i entered, and smiled and nodded in my direction.

The others seemed happy to ignore me. They would kneel on green pillows on the floor, and joined in on the chanting. I sat down by the door and watched, but after a few minutes I started feeling like I was intruding, so I got up and continued toward the park on the hill.

The park was really beautiful, lots of small ponds and bridges, and small paths and stairs were crisscrossing the hillsides between the trees. I clombed the stairs, and went into a building on top, they had displays of posters with chinese letters and some drawings inside. In the middle of the room there was a huge stone with chinese letters engraved. No explanations in english, and I was the only tourist there, so I felt like the 4 yuen I paid were kind of wasted. But the best was still to come, as I continued up the stairs to the top of the hill.

The chinese prefer their bridges to zig-zag, for some weird reason

At the very top, i saw the great pagoda, overlooking the entire city.

I paid an entrance fee here as well, 2 yuen! I can’t believe how cheap everything is in this city! I climbed to the top, and sat down to have lunch on the balcony. I loved the great views of the city, one could see the rivers and canals, and the huge housing projects shooting off into the distance. I’ve never seen housing like these, it gives mass production a whole new definition. I tried estimating the number of households in one cluster of apartments, with all the buildings of the same height, color and design. I figured out it would have like 40 thousand people, in just that city block. Amazing, and so different from the small 100-people housing projects back home!

I was tired, and hunting for a nice place to sit down and read. But I could not find a single teahouse, proper restaurant or anythign like it, just clothing shops and the like. I eventually found a tiny 6-table restaurant in a small shed, and ordered a coke from the all-Chinese menu. It was getting late, and I was exhausted after a long day. I tried to figure out how to get back to the hotel, and the only transportation i found was a bicycle taxi. The poor guys was pedalling me toward the train station for 20 minutes on his non-geared bike. I paid 15 yuen for it, but I’m pretty sure he was scamming me, he looked really weird when it was time to pay.

The whole day I’d not seen a single non-chinese person, and had not heard a single word of English. It was wonderful to get on the bus toward Hangzhou, and back to the convenience of a hotel. This was by far the most exotic day trip I’ve been on so far, exhausting but exciting!

I wandered randomly around Hangzhou today, exploring the promenade around the lake. I discovered a really nice teahouse by the water, and spent a couple of hours there drinking 2 pots of fruit tea, reading my book, and wathcing the boats on the water. Vacation can be really nice sometimes, especially when you find spots like this! 🙂

Eventually, I wound up in a nice area called Xihu Tiandi, somewhat similar to Xitiandi in Shanghai, only situated in a park near the lake, really beautiful surroundings! I had an amazing dinner at one of the expensive Chinese restaurants there. It was very convenient to get an english menu and english-speaking staff here.

Hangzhou has a very beautiful promenade along the lake shore

In the evening, I wanted to go shopping in the old commerce street. I took a cab there (which took me like 20 minutes to hail, damn these rush hours!) and milled about at random. I really liked how the city is thoroughly decorated, with nice decorative lights, and tons of well lit pedestrian streets lined with shops and restaurants.

I found out that the old street I was looking for was mainly closed, but I still found a few interesting shops, a sword outlet among other things. I did not buy one though, because all the good ones were thousands of yen. Maybe I’ll get one in a couple of years, until then I’ll just have to keep one on my birthday wish list!

Hangzhou restaurant street by night

I found another really weird shop. They selled jugs of preserved snakes, probably in some kind of oil. Notice the taps on the jugs in the picture? I found out that Chinese people will actually drink out of these for medicinal purposes. I just find that really really strange and a little bit revolting as well.

We took a really comfy train to Hangzhou, a “small” Chinese city of about 6 million people. I’m excited about exploring this city, it’s supposed to be the prettiest city in all of China. Locals have told me that Chinese people call Hangzhou “Heaven”, because it’s so beautiful. A lot of Chinese poetry is also inspired by the West Lake in Hangzhou.

We had huge problems getting a proper taxi, and spent about half an hour to get one the first time we tried. Rush hour and shift changes were appearantly the reason for this. Eventually, we gave up and got into a trike taxi, which is a small moped with an extra seat in the back. Here’s Kelly in front of the taxi. It was slow and uncofortable, but incredibly agile through the traffic. These are pure gold in rush hour!

We got a tiny moped tricycle taxi to the lake

The lake really was beautiful, and incredibly huge! I did not expect this size, I was more like half expecting to be able to walk around it. But that trek would take me days, and with the cold rain, that was not really an option 🙂

We were fortunate to walk past the musical fountain just when it was about to start. The show was beautiful, classical music combined with hundreds of dancing streams of water in different lights.

Musical fountain in Hangzhou

Hangzhou has a night market, which moves around a bit. We went there to try and get some good bargains. It was incredibly crowded, and I put all my stuff in my front pockets to avvoid being pickpocketed, even if I’ve seen zero crime so far in China. (Except the tea house prices the first day, real tourist trap that one!)

We found a few items, and haggled fiercely. We probably offended a few of the salesmen during our learning process, but we got an agreement with a couple of them. Some refused to haggle, we eventually found that only about half of them would actually haggle, the rest only used fixed price. I kinda preferred the haggle for fun, but in the long run the fixed price would be a lot more convenient.

The night market was a lot of fun!

One eager traveller, excited to explore another city!

We realized that the train platform kinda looked like the Harry Potter movie, and I just had to do a phoon of running into the column.

Kelly arrived in Shanghai today, and I was looking forward to exploring the city with her. First up was breakfast, and being of chinese heritage, I assumed she would figure out the numerous restaurants in Food Street, so we went for breakfast just a few meters down the road from the hostel.

She had a long discussion with the locals, and ended up ordering 3 dishes. When the stuff arrived, I was really amazed: Tofu soup, a bowl of warm soy milk, and some kind of donut sticks? WTFF!? I swear, I’ll never figure out this chinese food stuff! Well anyway, the donut sticks were pretty good, but we got out of there quite quickly.

Tofu soup, warm soy milk and donut sticks, this Chinese food is weird!

We walked to the Yu gardens, excited to go through the old city on the way. I’d only seen the very modern side of Shanghai so far, so it was really interesting to see the traditional buildings. The area looked really nice, and was full of Chinese tourists. There were also a lot of shopping streets and markets in the old city, it’s amazing how much cheap stuff they sell in this street.

Kelly in front of a building in Yuyuan  garden

One interesting thing we saw was the zig-zag bridge, which might prove useful one day. One can appearantly use it to get rid of ghosts, as the ghosts can only go straight. So if you feel like there’s some unholy presence following you around, try going through here, it might just help! 🙂

Officially ghost-free. Finally!

In the evening, we went to the bar on the observation deck on the 87th floor of the World Financial Center. 87 floors, that’s like 400 meters above ground! We got an incredible evening view over the Jin Mao and Broadcast towers, and I enjoyed an expensive but very good Tom Collins cocktail.

Nice evening cocktail at 400 meters above ground!

Yeah I love those skyscrapers! 🙂

Fresh chicken, anyone? Please get in line..

I’ve been really busy today, got up early and had an ambitious plan! I’ve been through 2 museums and walked from the hostel through the French Concession, and stayed the afternoon getting myself lost in the Taikang road area 🙂

My first visit was to the Urban Planning exhibition, where the officials of Singapore brag about their great city’s development. They had a great virtual tour of the city, and lots of fun little dioramas. I was a bit dissapointed not to see much future plans, it seems everything basically stops in 2010 when the Expo happens.

I also went to the Shanghai Contemporary Arts Museum, and it’s a funny coincidence how that abbreviates nicely to SCAM! 🙂 But while it was tiny and not a lot of interesting things there, I did find two pieces I liked, a pink scary angel and a room full of down. Yeah, I know my contemporary arts taste is kinda weird..

This room full of down left me speechless. It had a crazy weird atmosphere, with a bunch of fans blowing the down around, and the neon lights giving it a strange hue. 

For some reason this pink angel scared the hell out of me. I could not stop looking at it. If it would have moved, I’d be on the plane back home by now..

I spent the afternoon navigating my way southwest from the hostel towards the French Concession. This is the district governed by the French back in the day, and they built it in a beautiful european style. There’s also a couple of very interesting areas there, I walked through Xintiandi, a recently modernized old district. It’s beautiful, but that was not my destination.

Beautiful pedestrian streets of Xitiandi

Eventually I arrived at the Taikang road area, and spent a couple of hours in the narrow alleys. The area is filled with craftsmen, designers and artists, selling their work. And mixed in with that is lots and lots of bars and small cafes. I really liked the area, and can imagine it will explode at night with tons of partying people in the all-pedestrian streets. Hope I’ll be able to go out here sometime 🙂

Random street in the French Conecssion

Loved the shapes of this building. The top of it lights up at night too, then it looks like Sauron has a second home in Shanghai! 😛

Narrow alleys of Taikang road, a real maze of little shops and bars, and a very fun place to hang out

A quitet area of the People’s park, I liked sitting by the water to realax after the museum trips

God, this day was a tough day! I woke up with the worst hangover ever! And the time was 3:30 in the afternoon, so my plans to see some museums had failed already, they all close at 5.. ButI did see a bunch of great skyscrapers, and some spectacular city views!

Yesterday was a lot of fun though, I went up to the roof terrace to have a couple of beers, and sat a while talking to to a couple of the chinese people working here. Eventually a british guy called Simon came up, and he joined my table. Right after that, Jessica and Markus from Germany also sat down, and we had a bunch of beers before the bar closed. We all wanted more, so we set out to find a bar. Wandering randomly looking for an open bar in the middle of the night is of course very difficult, and we walked a few blocks until we arrived at Xintiandi, where we found a bunch of bars, even if they were quite expensive. Xintiandi is a modernized district, a couple of blocks where they transformed the old houses into a modern district full of entertainment. It’s very popular, and very tourist-friendly, hence the expensive prices! 🙂

We entered the first bar we saw, a upscale place with beautiful interior, lots of waiters and bartenders, and almost no guests. We had our drinks, and 15 minutes later they said they were closing. Funny thing is, they said “We close at three”, but held up two fingers. So we were a bit confused, but eventually marked it up to bad english skills. We continued down the street, and found another open bar. The area looked really nice, think I have to go back there another day! This bar closed rather quickly as well, but we were still thirsty.

I see now the moment causing today’s horrible hangover: We exited the bar, and decided to enter a convenience store and buy some beers, then head back to the hostel for more drinks. So we all bought a bunch of beers and once again found ourself sitting on the roof terrace. I’ve been told that we were up there until about 6 o clock, but that part of the night is a bit blurry to me.. 😛

Anyway, today I only got out of the hostel at about 5 pm, so I had a really late start. I went back to Pudong, wanting to see the skyscrapers lit up in the night. First, I went to the radio tower, and got a ticket to the observation deck. It was still a bit cloudy, but I got some spectacular sights of the city. I love the buildings here, super modern architecture.

The ambition of Shanghai really appeals to me, they build some great things here, if they keep this growth up this will be a truly amazing city. One thing that everyone is talking about is the Expo in Shanghai in 2010. They basically invited every country in the world to exhibit their wares for 5 months next year, starting in May. It’s a event to promote trade with Shanghai to foreigners, and they are transforming the city to prepare for this huge event. I think this is kind of the same mood as they had in Beijing before the Olympics.

But it really annoys me that the Bund, which is THE thing to see in Shanghai, is closed for construction! I did see a lot of it from the promenade, but it sucks that I cannot see it up close, and experience strolling down the famous street.

I walked to the river, and arrived at the promenade. The view was breathtaking, I could see the Bund across the river, and several skyscrapers in the city center. On the river I saw lots of boats with decorative lights, pulsing in the dark. I walked along the river, taking a bunch of pictures. It was a great experience, everyone should experience the river promenade at night when they visit Shanghai!

From the river I also go a nice view of the skyscrapers in Pudong. I especially liked the ones that had screens covering the entire side of the building. Nothing beats a 300 meter high tv-screen! 🙂

I have to say, the food here so far has been disappointing. I’ve eaten a lot of chinese, but I haven’t gotten a satisfying meal yet. I guess it’s incompetence on my part, not being able to order the right things. The street I’m living in (South Yunnan street) is appearantly called “Food street”, so the restaurants should probably be good here! I’ll have to do some more research on food!

Tonight is a bit more relaxing, as I hope to make the museums tomorrow 🙂

Looking forward to the urban planning exhibition and the contemporary arts museum!

More pictures:

The radio tower looks AWESOME at night! 🙂

Great view of the Shanghai buildings from the observation deck.

This was some kind of convention center, right by the river. Spectacular.

I loved the spotlights lighting up the sky from the building in the middle with what looks like a crown. 

The lights on top of the Jin Mao tower popped out of the clouds for a moment, what a beautiful sight! I want to go up there on a clear day! 🙂

Look it’s me, in front of the famous radio tower of shanghai!

I woke up in the “morning” at about 1 pm, after a good 12 hours of sleep. I was jet lag’s bitch yesterday, but today I was kinda awake.. 🙂 I actually kinda panicked, as I’d slept away so much of the day. I got up and stumpled to a nearby subway to get some “normal” breakfast. This chinese stuff is ok as well, but it kinda calms me to get a predictable meal. And I need the coarse bread for my stommach. I went for a long walk along the entire Nanjing road, the main pedestrian and shooping street in Shanghai.

Unfortunately, the Bund is closed for construction. That really sucks, as it’s supposed to be the top attraction in Shanghai. Anyway, I went through the tourist tunnel to the Pudong district, to look at the skyscrapers. The tunnel had a multimedia show with different zones, projecting images and sounds of lava, hell and water. It was only mildly interesting, but the good thing was getting across the river without getting my feet wet! 🙂

I arrived in Pudong, right by the radio tower. There was a lot of fog today, so I did not go up into the tower. I’ll try come back on a clear day. So today I just wandered around, and took pictures of skyscrapers. I got some good ones too, even some skyscrapers rising up into the clouds, looks like they will continue forever upwards! I will upload them later.

It’s funny how for every skyscraper i saw, I also saw a new one being erected just next to it. I wonder how this city is going to look in a few years, once they complete all these planned structures, it should be pretty spectacular. I hope to visit the urban planning center to see the plans, they supposedly have a 3d-show with flybys and stuff. Looking forward to it.

On my way home, it started raining real hard. That’s when I went into the chinese bakery to get some quick food. That was very confusing, they did not have a lady in a counter so I could point at what i wanted. Instead there were a bunch of glass monters across the floor. I eventually figured out that I had to talk to one of the girls standing around, and she would pick up a tray and follow me around and pick up stuff I pointed to. Then she went to the counter, where I pait to another girl. The bakery had like 12 employees and 6 guests, crazy stuff.

Going out tonight as well, or at least I’ll stay in the bar upstairs and see if there are anyone fun to talk to. The danish people from yesterday were kinda fun, but not really experienced travellers, and got us really lost. I was actually kinda happy to not be stuck in that 80Y pr drink bar we walked into,  in our sneakers, shorts and t-shirts 🙂 I ended up getting back home after spending only like 60Y on the entire evening, including the bottles of beer in the hostel. Good value, at least.

Construction work in Pudong

This skyscraper was made of gold. Honest! No lying. Or maybe only gold plated. Or maybe only gold painted. Anyway, it looked different, I liked it!

I looved this one! If I had an evil empire, this is where I’d have my HQ!

World financial center and the Jin Mao tower, extending into the clouds!

I arrived in Shanghai at about 8 in the morning on a Sunday. Not the busiest time, and the Pudong airport seemed almost empty! Nice to avvoid queuing, but there was a downside, no crowds to follow. So I was milling about, trying to figure out the signs. Most of them were translated, but not very well.

For instance, I was quite hesitant to use the “Cash Recycling Machine”, did not have quite the ATM ring to it. Anyway, as I was taking this picture of the machine, I totally forgot to pick up my card, instead I just grabbed my money and went. Luckily, a police officer saw me walking away, while I was staring confused at the signs, and he noticed the beeps from the machine. So he came running after me, “Halooo, your card sir!”. I was embarassed to say the least, and a bit stressed out, if the journey started like this, how would this end!?

I eventually found my way to the maglev station, and once again I could not figure out how the system worked.The stairs down to the plattform were closed, so I went looking for another set of stairs. But eventually I figured out thet this was a waiting area, for people to sit down while waiting, and the stairs would open a couple of minutes before the train arrieved, so we could board straight away. How very chinese! 🙂

Anyway, to my excitement, there were a speed indicator in the train, so we could monitor how fast we were going. I was thrilled to see it beyond 300 km/h, but suddenly it soared to a staggering 431 km/h! Thescenerey just flew by, and we were in the main rain station after only 10 minutes. Mind-blowing!

I had memorized the way to the hostel, so it was no big problem getting there. The subway stop had 20 exits tho, so I spent a while finding exit 1. Shanghai was beautiful, much nicer than expected. I live close to the people’s square, and loved the skscrapers and parks in the area.

I was walking around the neighbourhood when a couple of girls asked me where I was from. I replied, a bit hesitantly, that I was from Norway. I’m usually very cautious toward strangers in the streets, as I hate salespeople. But these girls were not selling anything, they just wanted to talk.  They said they were on their way to have tea, and wondered if I wanted to join, and naturally I said yes.I kinda thought of it as a cup of cofee or similar, I totally forgot about the stuff I’d heard about how people drink tea in China!

We ended up in a small tea house a bit east of the people’s square. the girls led the way, and we got into a tiny room with 4 chairs around a table. A little girl in a traditional blue dress welcomed us, and negotiated different teas etc with the girls. It was all in Chinese, but luckily one of the girls would try and translate everything to me. We drank 6 different teas, and ate some nuts and fruit as well. For every new tea, the hostess would tell a little story about the tea, pass the box around so we could smell it, then pour some into a small cup.

The ceremony was well over an hour, and very intense. The girls would constantly ask me about Norway and my life there, and tell me how to hold my cup, about eye contact and other customs etc. I was almost exhausted afterwards, trying to keep up with the Chinese customs and understanding what the hell was going on. 🙂 But it was so much fun, and well worth the time and money. I also bought some tea with me, so I can remember this experience. I’d love to do it again, maybe I’ll enjoy it more once it’s a bit less foreign to me!

I parted with the girls and went back to the hostel, hope to see them again for dinner some other time.  But first I’m up for some beer at the roof terrace!

Does anyone have some tips for things to do in Shanghai? I’m here for 6 nights, looking for adventure! 🙂

-Øyvind