Shanghai Tour

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Apart from one student in the program waking up in a random apartment in Pudong with two French girls who were just glad he was alive and not in a coma and who helped him pay for a taxi back to SJTU and him barely making it to the tour on time, that morning was uneventful - though I did go for a another run and cut my leg on something.

First stop on the tour Saturday morning was at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre. We had a short tour of the place, seeing the history of the Bund, how Shanghai has quickly developed and grown, how the architecture in several districts has been changed or preserved, and plans for the future. I scanned around a little bit, but much of it was in Chinese, though I still need to go back sometime to really get more of the history. The most interesting thing they had there was an enormous scale model of the downtown area of Shanghai called "Shanghai 2020". It is actually the largest city scale model in the world! It's of a 110 sq. km section of Shanghai which is in total 6,340 sq. km (and growing). I have plenty of pictures of it, haha - I had to delete about half. The virtual tour of Shanghai was interesting, it gave a nice visual overview of the city with weird avatars (see pic and video), but audio was only available in Chinese.

After a group picture, we hopped on the bus over to the Bund and underground to the "Bund Tourist Tunnel". Just watch the video, I captured most of it! As a friend put it, it's like something you'd expect to see in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Everyone's "Oohhs" at the start of the ride (video) cracked me up. It was a bit disappointing to me, kinda expected more, really no reason to pay for it, glad it came with the tour, ha. I snapped a few better pictures of the Pearl TV Tower on the way to the Huangpu River and then we started our micro-voyage on some boat. I forced everyone into a group picture semi-successfully, relaxed with my headphones and the scenery, and chatted with the tour guide and others for a bit. The tour guide was open with his opinions towards current politics but couldn't say too much about China or comment on the past, one student tried to pry a little. But he told us about the Shanghai Financial building (see pic) and how most buildings along that side of the river were for banks and etc. I wish it had been a clear day, but at least it was cool and not raining...until later but only for a short while.

We ate a short lunch in a family-style restaurant in the "Temple Earth God" area of Shanghai or "Old Town" Shanghai and then entered the shopping complex near Dragon-gate mall with remodeled Suzhou style outer architecture. We were supposed to head into the historic Yuyuan Gardens (best "Suzhou" gardens in Shanghai) but seeing as it might start raining again, decided not to. I started off with Ted and Sean, but soon lost them and just wandered around by myself. We had 2 hours to mess around and then regroup for the bus or be left to find our own transportation (taxi's are pretty cheap). All around you could smell a horrid aroma from what I finally figured out was "cho tofu" (stinky tofu), supposed to be good though. I watched a traditional Chinese paper theatre, but could only understand bits of the story cause the narration was in Chinese. They're really meant for children, but it's an experience, ha. This is not the one in the video, that was just a puppet display. We had to peep through little holes to see the paper and lighting/shade effects that made characters appear. The story had something to do with trickery in each scene, and in one scene had a kid hiding behind a branch, peeing on some guy fishing in a pond...

I traveled outside and went down several alleys with tiny, but long stretches of random shops - one really small one on the video, ha. Around the actual mall I saw several craftworks including some type of lute/ocarina instrument and some very intricate Jade works. Before I left to try to find the bus, I ran into three "art students" from Beijing who grabbed my attention by saying they liked my hair...haha, couldn't resist. I followed them to their art shop and although I thought it may be a scam, I liked a few of the works (calligraphy and paintings) and ended up buying a few of the cheaper ones, after bargaining down. I had to run to catch the bus and jumped on it right as it was pulling out of some parking lot!

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Photos

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Joey tired after an interesting night

The Countdown
outside the Urban Planning Exhibition Center

Close up view of the model
I had to lean over the railing! The white (not tan) buildings are future buildings and the darker ones (if there are any) are being torn down?

You can see Metro City!
It's the ball

Shanghai 2020 City Model
taken from upstairs...still couldn't fit it totally within the frame, haha

China's Representative Building for the 2010 World Expo
...just the design, construction has yet to begin I think

Shanghai Monuments
An artistic combination of a few of the most known buildings in Shanghai

Pearl Oriental TV Tower
Close up view

On the Huangpu River Boat Tour
Too bad it was so cloudy that day...

The whole SSP Group on the River Boat
...except for a few people on the fringes (and me, I'm photographer, ha)

Old Town Shanghai
Somewhat phoney, Suzhou style architecture on buildings housing numerous shops from street vendors to brand name clothes shops

Suzhou style architecture
...remodeled, not real

Old Town was packed on the weekend
Shoulder to shoulder until you got to the side streets

A building facing opposite the entrance to the Yuyuan Garden
Yuyuan garden is the best Suzhou style garden in Shanghai. It was created initially by the Pan family and then was taken over during the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion (by the Swords Society). It has now been restored.

Very expensive Jade Sculpture
Supposedly of a very famous Buddhist figure who sounds like "Le Zuo", who the store clerk said was compared to a god

Shanghai World Financial Center (to the right)
Looks like a bottle opener, because the building was initially designed by a Japanese Company and was to have a circle opening in the middle. However, this would look too much like the Japanese flag, so Chinese authorities decided to modify the opening to a square design. It costs 150 yuan to get to the top.