A Day in Downtown Shanghai

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The next day we got up early for a full day downtown. After a delicious pancake-like breakfast from a street vendor, we took the subway to People’s square. The day was very cold and foggy causing the skyscrapers to fade off into the distance. However, as we exited the subway we were immediately awe-struck by the 1,000 foot high Marriott Executive Apartments building in front of us, part of "Tomorrow Square". A towering building, it can best be described as something straight out of the pages of Lord of the Rings. I just found out that the top floors of the building are the highest apartments in Shanghai.




On our way to the Shanghai Art Museum we were intercepted by three Chinese tourists on vacation. They were awed at the fact that I was wearing shorts. They were very nice and we each started having a good conversation with one of them in broken English. They seemed very interested in us and were delighted to converse with an American. We went to the Shanghai Art Museum where we were greeted by a Rembrandt gallery. We wanted to see classic Chinese art though, so we breezed through it and moved on to the other 4 floors. The highlight of the museum for me was undoubtedly the Chinese landscape paintings. These creations are beautifully subtle in their presentation of the gorgeous countryside. They are painted in a watercolor style on giant scrolls with poems inscribed on them. The brush strokes have a breezy and carefree quality about them giving a heavenly feel to the paintings. I especially like the tiny pagodas with people having tea in them, dwarfed by the “humps” of land jutting out of serene lakes. Mom, they are like the ones we saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.



One of my favorites was a 50 foot horizontal scroll with a somewhat abstract painting of bamboo shoots coming out of a lake. I would say that this style of art is my second favorite to the Hudson River School. On our way out of the museum we were again intercepted by three Chinese girls on vacation - one of whom was exceedingly attractive. We had a good chat with them for a while and then met up with Anne to go to the Shanghai Exhibition Center.

The exhibition center was also the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. Its better name would have been the Chinese Propaganda Expo, however. The museum was very interesting though, with many exhibits glorifying the various engineering feats of the Chinese government. The main feature was a giant replica of Shanghai that covered an entire floor of the building. Not until then did we realize how enormous the city really is. The skyscrapers spread for miles in every direction of city-center.

We then met up with Tyler and Sam. As we were looking for a place to have dinner, Raf came across the last thing we would expect to find in Shanghai China: on the other side of the globe, a Pollo Campero! Pollo Campero is a Guatemalan fast food chain much like KFC, which is enormously popular in Latin America. After a delicious dinner we walked down the neon extravaganza that is Nanjing Road. It looks like Las Vegas, with every building covered in flashing neon lights. At the end of the road, we reached the Bund, which is a very nice and well developed “boardwalk” on the edge of the river overlooking the classic Shanghai skyline. Many of the tall skyscrapers on the other side of the river are completely covered in LCD lights making them giant TV screen ads. It is quite a sight to see. Even more impressive is a GIANT TV-boat that motors up and down the river. Speaking of boats, the countless shipping vessels traveling down the river from the interior of the country towards the ports on the ocean were quite the sight to see at nighttime. The pollution engulfing the city caused a bright yellow glow that permeated the air over the river. This, compounded with the fact that the (very broken down and tattered) shipping boats are made out of some strange black wood and there are no laws regarding navigation lights on boats, caused them to appear as pitch black ghastly shapes ominously plodding through the brown sludge of the river. It is actually rather frightening watching these very old demon-ships, sometimes with one red eye of a light, passing in front of the modern, shiny, and well-lit skyline.

We were met by a great number of beggars during our walk down the Bund. They targeted us because we were white and pushed the boundaries of appropriate behavior. I was taking a long exposure picture of the skyline and this woman started pushing me, rubbing my arms, and putting her face in front of my camera to get attention.

Raf, Kevin, and I then decided to see what the various nagging sellers could offer us. We followed one guy into his sketchy hidden alleyway store where we were offered a plethora of fake wares. After being nagged even more, we finally convinced the guy that we were just looking and left.

Overall, it was a wonderful day of experiencing Chinese culture. I’ve come to the conclusion that Shanghai has the most beautiful buildings of any city I’ve been to. Tyler informed us that it is because of two things: one, that no two buildings are allowed to look alike and two, that nearly every skyscraper above twenty floors was built in the past few decades. The buildings look nothing like New York buildings. The top of each one is very stylized. One of them on the Bund has a golden top that looks like a flower opening to the sky - much like the top of a Corinthian column. I truly am in love with the architecture of this city.



After a very great night’s sleep and subsequently relaxing morning, we had a brunch of delicious dumplings from a street vendor. It was Sam’s birthday so we had a great day planned ahead of us.

- Dan

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