Shanghai - Final Day

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*** Last Entry - thank you for bearing with my erratic updates! I hope reading was fun. ***

For my last day in Shanghai, I decided to walk around and see as much as possible. I started the day with a walking tour down the riverside of the Bund. I started with the area up by the Suzhou Creek - a smaller tributary feeding into the Huangpu River. Apparently, this used to be a cesspit, but there has been a lot of pressure to clean it up and now, though I should imagine it's far from clean enough to drink or swim in, it's no dirtier than most inner city rivers.

On the far bank of the Creek are the Broadway Mansions - an exclusive 1930s apartment block for rich foreigners living in Shanghai. The Foreign Correspondents' Club apparently occupied a floor during the 1930s and from there reported the Japanese bombing. It also served as the Japanese HQ during the Second World War. Frankly, the 'exclusive' architecture has aged badly - it's in good condition from what I could see, but it was brown and shapeless and not particularly attractive by more modern standards.

I walked past Huangpu Park - infamous for the sign allegedly saying "No dogs. No Chinese" (apparently untrue).

From there, I walked parallel to the River again - much as I had done the first day in Shanghai. This time, however, I walked along the pavement rather than on the promenade on the other side of the road. This took me past all the old riverside buildings in the Bund, the most famous of those being the Peace Hotel and the original HSBC bank.

The Peace Hotel was quite underwhelming from the outside - I can only assume that the interior lives up to its reputation of decadent luxury. According to my guidebook, the Bank of China nextdoor was constructed with secret instructions to make it bigger than the hotel. Now that's one-upmanship.

The HSBC Bank, on the other hand, was amazing. Outside, it has an amazing art deco facade - complete with snooty art deco lions guarding the entrance. The interior is even more fabulous - marble fixtures everywhere, and the foyer ceiling is gilt with murals of the signs of the zodiac. Although the public have access to the building, it is no longer an operating bank, but an office of sorts.

The bank was the last stop on my walking tour and from there I headed towards People's Square, where I walked through the surprisingly peaceful park in Renmin Square to the Shanghai Museum.

The museum gets a lot of good press in the guidebook - it's kind of like the British Museum. I walked through the sculpture and painting exhibits. The sculptures were amazing - much further along than their European historical equivalents - although perhaps that's an unfair comparison, given that European sculpture took a hit as far as realistic anthropomorphic representation (big words) were concerned after the Roman era.

The painting exhibit also held some calligraphy. I must admit that while I can wonder at the delicate ink brush strokes of the painting, the calligraphy leaves me totally cold. Probably because I don't really understand how much skill is required to shape the characters.

After visiting the museum - although I could have spent longer had I wished - I walked down to the area known as the French Concession. The Bund has European architecture, balanced by a Chinese shopping ethos and by lots of Chinese visitors. The French Concession, by contrast, was crammed with foreigners, foreign architecture and foreign shops and cafes. I walked past Pauls, Starbucks, Costa Coffee, Pizza Express and others. The area is mainly residential, apart from a small plaza - a nucleus of foreign-ness - with all the eateries.

Mostly, the French Concession looks like Notting Hill, or one of the nicer suburbs of Paris: large, classy blocks of flats, separated from the road by a gate system, with fenced off gardens. Interspersed are small shops, cafes, bookstores and also small inner city parks. And the roads are tree lined - which I never saw anywhere else.

Strangely, this close to going back to the UK, I resented this foreign intrusion on Shanghai, and so stayed long enough to have one cup of coffee - and NOT in Starbucks, Pauls or Costa - before walking back up to People's Square to look around before walking back down East Nanjing Road for the last time.

I went into one of the high rise buildings I came across, and went up to the 7th floor cafe, to drink apple juice and watch the shoppers far below. The windows happened to look out over a small stage which was, inevitably, advertising the Expo - particularly the South African pavillion, given the World Cup had just kicked off.

I took the metro over to Pudong, had some dinner and walked around to take in the night sights again and for the last time. Fortunately, the rain had stopped - in fact it had been quite a nice day - and, despite the crowds on the promenade once I'd crossed the river back to the Bund, it was a lovely walk and a great way to end my stay.

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Photos

Waibaidu Bridge
between Suzhou Creek and Huangpu River

North China Daily News
Atlas figures supporting the roof.

Shanghai Museum
Outside the museum were copies of some of the pieces inside.