Blogs from Huangpu, Shanghai, China, Asia

CHRIS On Monday we went sightseeing and bargaining. I bought a jade turtle and a dragon made of dead grass which took two hours to make. Dad's friend Penny who works with him showed us around Shanghai and we went on six trains which were crowded with people. Matt sat on a closed in water well and I took a picture but then all these girls came running to him and also took pictures of him. When we were in Shanghai Matt and I got a lot of strange looks. At lunch time I had icecream and duck tongue. The duck tongue was chewy but it was quite nice. Then we went to a garden with lots of fish which were in huge fish tanks. That's all for today folks. MATTHEW Yesterday we went to the ... read more

Hi Everyone, I want to tell you about my two-day visit to Shanghai. Whenever Shanghai is mentioned in Beijing it always seems to be with a sort of reverence, almost like some families relate to the rebellious offspring who has become a great success. Thank God for Wikipedia since not many of us know the details given here: Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and with over 17.8 million people. (Beijing is a paltry 11.7 million.) It is a major financial centre and the busiest container port in the world. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China, Shanghai sits at the mouth of the Yangtze River on the East China Sea, roughly equidistant from Beijing and Hong Kong. "Once a fishing and textiles town, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th ... read more

I left work a little bit early on Friday afternoon to take a train to Shanghai. I met my parents at their hotel, which was a really nice place. We spent the evening walking around the immediate area. It was actually raining a little bit, so the weather wasn't ideal, but we managed. We ate dinner at a restaurant seemingly frequented by Westerners, but I think the food was authentic enough. I had a craving for some ice cream so we went to Häagen Daz afterwards. Mom was blown away by how fancy the Pizza Huts are here. They are actually sit-down restaurants with silverware and professional wait-staff. Kinda unbelievable. We ended up back at the hotel and Mom went up to the room while Dad and I went to the hotel bar for a drink. ... read more

The last day of the Spring Festival is marked by the Lantern Festival (gotta love a country that has a festival within a festival). In Shanghai, the Lantern Festival epicentre is Yu Garden (a wonderful tourist trap that is a must see while in Shanghai), where, thanks to their wonderful sponsor Pepsi, massive lantern sculptures are on display across the garden and surrounding buildings. A couple of friends and I decided to shell out our ¥80 ($13 - go big or go home), and join the crushing crowds to see the sculptures. I have to say, it was pretty cool. Each sculpture showed a different Chinese story (my friend Mingming identified a few, but my brain was in photo-mode so nothing was retained), they were very intricate and thanks to modern technology had moving parts, lasers, ... read more

Shanghai!!! After a succesful hail down of a taxi in the morning (we haven't been to succesful in the past...) we managed to get to the train station in Qufu well ahead of time. As train journeys go it was a boring dozy 5 hours. Luckily the train conductor came to tell us to get off the train as I'd miscalculated an hour (would have shot straight past Shanghai otherwise). Although we weren't in the bullet train (a chance we're sorry we've missed but hey) we still managed to travel around 250km/ph which is a personal land speed record. After dumping our stuff in the hostel we headed out to find some form of food as the cook was on spring festival holidays in the hostel and most restaurants were closed in the vicinity (it was ... read more