Shanghai - Part 2

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We've now spent four days lazing in Shanghai. We've taken it extremely easy - sleeping late and sitting in cafes and just generally meandering around the French Concession area. We've discovered that Shanghai is a great food city, not only is the local cuisine good but the western style food is amazing and could rival Melbourne and Sydney's cafes (although Dan says it would rival Sydney, never Melbourne!) Specifically we've eaten a few times in an area called Taikang Road Art Centre, which is an area of laneways with funky cafes, bars, galleries and shops. It seems to be where Shanghai's trendy young things and expats hang out and is a great place just to people watch. We ate at a cool little cafe called Kommune where we ate delicious grilled panini - mine was roasted beetroot, capsicum, eggplant, sun-dried tomato, cheese and lettuce. Mmmm! I also had an amazing banana and honey smoothie. Maybe we were just craving western-style food, but it was sensational! We also tried a local Thai chain called Simply Thai, and again our meals were very tasty. I'd highly recommend both places if you're visiting Shanghai.
In Taikang Rd Art Centre we visited a wonderful photography gallery run by a local photographer, Deke Erh. His work was really impressive and inspiring and he's photographed China, Mongolia and Turkey. All the photos we saw were in black and white, but we saw dozens of books by him on China that were in colour. I'm sure he has an online presence, too.
In-between backpackers we splurged for a few nights on The Old House Inn - a 1930s style old hotel complete with dark wood panels, louvered window shutters, a cast iron bath on claw legs and wooden tub chairs. It lived up to the romanticised ideal of old Shanghai as having a colonial and ganster's feel.
Aside from sipping milkshakes and sleeping in, we also visited an ancient town on the outskirts of Shanghai called Qibao. We'd hoped to visit one of the famed 'water towns' and thought this would be a good precursor as we'd heard it had little bridges and a canal. Qibao dates back to the 10th century, and while it does have a canal and bridges it is far from picturesque - instead it's overcrowded with domestic tourists and really not very pretty and we had to pay to get in. It totally put us off going further afield and visiting a water town. Maybe our loss, maybe not. Perhaps we should of heeded the warning in the fact that the town is administed by the Shanghai Qibao Ancient Town Tourism Exploitation Co.!
Despite our not so exciting trip to Qibao, last night made up for it when we saw the wonderful Shanghai Acrobatics Troupe. I'm not sure I can summarise how talented these people are. It was a spectacular show and I found myself mesmerised in a way I've never been in West End shows (as much as I love them). It was a case of just marvelling at how the human body can contort and how skilled people can make such unnatural looking feats look easy. We saw men jumping and somersaulting through hoops, a man riding a bike upside-down along a tightrope, a young girl who was a contortionist and put her limbs into absurd positions, a man and woman 'flying' and spinning around stage attached only to a silk ribbon, people being flipped off a giant see-saw and landing on the shoulders of someone standing on the shoulders of someone else standing on the shoulders of someone else. You get the picture. Words really can't do it justice, but it was fantastic!
We had a taxi driver today who nodded off at every red traffic light. When the car stopped his head would fall forward and his eyes close. He only woke up when Dan coughed towards him or said 'hey'. It must have been a long night for him! I don't think we've encountered one taxi driver who has spoken any English, so we're grateful that the trusty Lonely Planet guide has many place names written in Chinese. The traffic in Shanghai has at times been a little hairy but we've both noticed that we're a bit oblivious to it, having been conditioned for mad driving recently in Cairo.
All the locals are very friendly and people have been coming up and practising their English on us. We were accosted by two girls today who talked non-stop, firing question after question at us until we made polite excuses some fifteen minutes later and escaped. It was exhausting! Dan got cornered shortly after a second time by two different girls but I pretended not to have noticed and continued taking photos of lotus flowers in a pond!
The only thing we haven't liked about the culture in China is that it seems to be totally acceptable for men to 'hoik' up phlegm and then spit it on the street. It's a disgusting habit but seems to be widespread and no one takes any notice. There's a sign in the back of the taxis that if your driver does it you don't have to pay for the fare! Oh, and the other thing about the taxis in Shanghai is that many of them have touch screens on the back of the front passenger seat. I've enjoyed many a movie preview and ad for '100% Pure New Zealand' as we've been driving around!
For all of you who know of my shopping reputation, you may be disappointed. Aside from a pair of silk shoes and a pirated Grace Kelly collection DVD, I haven't bought anything here. I did discover a Zara and had one last look at my favourite shop before returning to Oz. Unfortunately the stock was the same as in London and I'd tried on most things already! Dan shopped locally and bought his favourite soap from L'Occitaine. Talk about not discovering new things! He did try haggling with them but it didn't work!
Now it's goodbye to Shanghai. We're off to the south of China to an area called Guilin. The weather prediction is heavy rain and some thunderstorms. Ugh!

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