Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2012
Edit Blog Post
This blog covers several days. Shanghai has so many different styles that some of it is good for walking and some is just office blocks or modern shop fronts.
Walk 1. This started with the pedestrianised Nanjing Street. It was a historic street in Shanghai, but the modern shop fronts have taken over. The electric trolley bus was incongruously playing Christmas music. The next target was the old city. This was disappointing, tourist shops but generic and not as good as the ones in Pingyou or Yangshou. In the nearby Yu fashion garden (shops not a garden) I was surprised to find a Marks & Spencer. After that I walked west and found myself in a genuinely old part of Shanghai. There must be few of these areas left. There were old houses, washing hanging out, food being cooked street style and fruit stalls - a complete contrast to the so called "old town" I had been in five minutes earlier. Continuing to west there was another contrast. This part of Shanghai has been created fairly recently. The introduction was a lake and park. This led further on to the area called Xintiandi. This is an area of up market
restaurants, bars and shops with London prices. I didn't eat here, but visited the Shikumen museum. The Xintiandi is two blocks of old Shikumen houses which have been restored or rebuilt depending ontheir state of repair. Shikumen houses were built in Shanghai from the 1860s to the 1940s. They were a combination of Chinese and western architecture used by the Chinese middle classes. The rooms inside the house were quite small. A small room on the landing between the ground floor and the first floor was sometimes rented out by the family to writers/artists. The walk ended back at People's square with a visit to Kathleen's, a cafe and restaurant above the Shanghai art gallery - good views over the square. The Shanghai art gallery was moderately interesting, but for modern art it lacked zest.
Walk 2. This started near the Suzhou canal at Moganshan Road, an area for commercial modern art galleries. The art in these galleries was very mixed. Some of it was very commercial, some was weird not very good and some was high quality and very expensive. It was more entertaining and more Chinese than the works in the Shanghai art gallery. I liked one
artist's work in ..I also found an attractive pottery shop with affordable pieces, but better than the stuff in the tourist shops. Unfortunately I could not buy much because i have to carry it. I walked on to the jade Buddha temple. This is quite a modern temple, but fairly popular. The jade Buddhas are nineteenth century and came from Burma. The seated Buddha is particularly revered. It is in a room upstairs and visitors are kept at a distance. The smaller reclining Buddha downstairs is easy to miss in a room with lots of Buddhist artefacts for sale. After the temple I continued walking in the direction of People's Square. On the way I stopped at a supermarket and unexpectedly at a hairdressers. The hairdressing service in China includes a neck and shoulder massage and ear cleaning. Somehow I don't think a UKhairdresser would go as far as ear cleaning. The hair cut was not bad and I paid £10 for it.
Walk 3. This walk started with a visit to the Planning exhibition hall in Shanghai. The first couple of floors focussed on the history Shanghai with old photos. The Astor house hotel had an honourable mention. Up another floor was a huge model of Shanghai and a virtual reality experience of Shanghai in 2020. I saw how the building under construction next to the world financial centre will look when it is finished. It will be the tallest building. An area of development in the next few years will be improving the transport connections to Honquiao airport. I was inspired by the displays to walk some of the French Concession streets, especially Wukang Road (with the help of the metro). Wukang Road is lined with plane trees, like some of London's streets. It was quite difficult to see some of the architecture because most of it was hidden behind high walls, but I had a few glimpses. I continued the walk in the same area towards South Shanxi Road. It took some time because I stopped for a massage at the dragonfly retreat and for pancakes. South Shanxi Road wasn't very interesting, but I continued south and shopped in the Tianzifang area.
Walk 4. A visit to the post office in Tiantong Road followed by a walk back along the Suzhou canal to People's Square for another visit to the Shanghai Museum - see photos. After the museum I walked along Nanjing Road to the shopping centre for supper at the restaurant specialising in Hunnan cuisine. I chose a spicy dish with squid. About one quarter of the dish was chillies, but quite mild ones.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0379s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb