Late update - Shanghai expo trip...

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Working hard in Hong Kong i stumbled upon a blank week in the calendar.
I leapt at the chance and booked the time off - straight to the travel agent and booked the flights for Shanghai - originally with China Eastern Airlines but ended up paying another $300HKD more to fly with Dragon Air - which was ok by me as 2 days after i made the change i saw a youtube clip of a china eastern airline plane's engine held on with duc-tape! so erm..good decision!

The plan was to fly out on Monday 14th August early in the morning to have the whole day there. Staying with Emma and going with her to the Expo on a few days using a pass with someone on it who VAGUELY resembled me...wander about Shanghai for the rest of the time and fly back afternoon of the 20th June ready for work bright and far too early on the 21st.

Emma was out there working for The Natural Theatre Company - a street theatre compay based in Bath in the UK which we have both worked for in the past. She was working out there for two months and I would be visiting during the monthly change over of actors out there so i was as new to Shanghai as some of the others!

Stayed at my friend Seth;s house on Sunday night as he lives in Tung Chung close to the airport.
Woke about 5:30am and headed to the airport in a taxi - got there and checked in - chose my seat as i was pretty much the first person there.
Phoned home and spoke to my sister and my friend Scott which was nice - and killed some time!
Through the extremely efficient security and fell asleep by the gate for an hour and a half and woke when the half mile queue to board the plan was fully formed. So i commenced the classic british tradition of not queuing straight away as the plane wont leave without me!
which it didnt!
Dragon Air turned out to be a good choice - bloody comfy seats - and with a blanket thrown over me i settled down to try and get back to sleep.
I failed.
I am not a good flyer - i wont let it stop me travelling but still not a good flyer! although i have an obsession with window seats and must look out everytime turbulence shakes the plane - just to check if the wings are still there...ha!

A short 2 hours later i landed in shanghai and raced off the plane to meet emma - emotional moment worthy of any hollywood or indeed 'love actually' beginning coming up - OR NOT. i was early - or she was late but either way i needed to use the toilet and found emma upon my return - waiting at the gate - intending to sneak up on her also failing as she turned to see me beforei could get close - there was a beautiful awkward hug moment!! haha

Taxi drivers in Shanghai are nuts. no other way to describe it - during my week i would have quite happily boarded a China Eastern Airline flight over getting in a taxi with some of the reckless men inhabiting the vehicles on the roads of central shanghai!! Opening bottle with their hands - elbows left on the wheel - reading maps, books and even once i swear a driving handbook!!

The 45minute ride to Emma's hotel passed quickly catching up on everything with both of us.

Work however caught up with me pretty quickly and was forced into work mode when a teacher from a school i am planning workshops for phoned to confirm some details!

Only a short tiem at the hotel before i was anxiously flattening my hair to remotely resemble the young russian man in the photograph whom i was impersonating this week to get me into the expo site.
Through the first sets of barriers - cheerfullysmiling and making strong eye contact with the security guards to relieve and attention to my pass...then more checks and finally a bloody scanner - which flashed up a LARGE VERSION of the picture. still nothing! and it continued in this vain all week - i think a small case of 'they all look the same' may well have been occuring!! ha!

So the expo site...was collossal - different large areas dedicated to continents each with many many individual country pavillions - some beautiful architecture - and clearly some concrete bloacks that had been painted.
Proud to say i think the Uk pavillion was some of my favourite architecture - the 'seed cathedral' made of 60,000 pieces of fibre optic plastic - each tubing containing a seed - it was pretty stunning up close.

So the Natural Theatre Company, along with other theatre companies from the UK had been hired to perform in the park area around the pavillion and to entertain the crowds - which they did!!
There were some hilariousm oments through out the week when i was at the expo site following the guys around taking photos for them. I als ogot to know a couple of the girls from a different company who were great and we went on a fun afternoon wandering the expo and taking pictures of the locals in the same way they would at us! - literally just walk past you, ram a camera in your face, click and walk away if they did it to us that afternoon we grabbbed them and took loads of pictures with them! they loved it!

My favourite place was the african pavillion - it had a great atmoshpere and eveyoe at each of the stands was so friendly.
The african pavillion was a huge building like a warehouse that house many different nations on the african continent such as namibia, zimbabwe, mozambique etc. There were other pavillions from african countryies outside like angola - which i think was my foavourite but the african pavillio had 40 - 50 different nations covered insdie so was a great place to wander around.

The site was well maintained and worth a visit - but i dont think i would have paid to go in. A lot of the pavillions - although they had pretty outsides, had 4 - 8 hour queues to get in - and once inside a lot just had wikipedia style information inside them. there were exceptions - like chile - which was well thought out and had a message but others would have seriously annoyed me if i had queued up for that long to see one!!

One of the days i also wandered for hours while emma and the guys went off to work i walked the streets surrounding Nanjing road and had a few adventures. There was a lot of intese wealth next to extrem poverty and low income housing. I walked down many alleyways that i am pretty sure it was unsafe to do so but in doing this i met some beautiful children - indeed at one point later in the afternoon i emerged into a small courtyard with some light traffic passing through it but children playing badminton. I went to take a photo which they loved and came to look at my camera - they then handed me a racket and insisted i play - so i spent a while playing and laughing and being generally terrible. the goodbye would have been an inappropriate time for pictures so the memories of their faces will just have to sustain me.

I also looked at all the fantastic street food being sold and when i lingered too long at a place with some frying meat and old woman gavem e a beautiful toothless grin and forced some upon me - it turnedo ut to be delicious - and she wouldnt accept payment so i thanked her and with a smile and then a chorus off goodbye and waves from the gentlemen sitting nearby i continued onwards.
i saw some beautiful things on that walk, some very simple ways of lining - and some great happiness, and no pity, the men were proud and the women healthy. The children played freely and waed and smiled happily if i greeted them.

I enjoyed the food in shanghai immensley. I ate at wht i am told is quite a famous fried dumpling restaurant and i can say that in my 5 and a half months in HK i havent tasted a dumpling as good as the ones near the hotel! soup filled and with pork and coriander i think they were amazing and so cheap - i wish i had bought a hundred of them back with me!

The other food experiences were grat. very interesting hearing what a lot of familiar dishes were called in mandarin insteadof cantonese. It was interesting seeing the new guys working the naturals having a lot of the same reactions i have seen in HK. i liked that a lot of whats in HK translates over in Shanghai and i ate very well and introduced the guys to some new dishes.

The bets meal i had was a night out with emma when we went to the french concesion - near some tv studios. a vegetarian restaurant wherei ate the best sweet and sour 'pork' tofu i have ever tasted. we had to order a second plate. it was turly beautiful.
Also got all dressed up on friday night and took emma out to eat at the best Sichuan cuisine restaurant in town which was amazing indeed and had some rather spicy praws and crab - again - beautiful!!

I visited the Yu Yuen gardens which were amazing - beautiful architecture and so peaceful. spent a whole afternoon there with emma which was brilliant.
i also on my lonesome travels met an art student from beijing who took me to her and her peer's gallery where i bought some artwork for emma as a present and got lost for a while in the beauty of the work. It was great to meet someone so open and friendly who ultimately wasnt trying to con me out of any money and i insisted i wanted to buy her work.

The obvious tourist spot i isited was the Bund. i went down there one afternoon and one night with emma when the lights looked beautiful over the river. the skyline is impressive but it had the HK skyline to live up to - it was certaily different with some stunning buildings.

Shanghai was just a lot more open ad less intense than Hong Kong - it is truly a sprawling city and by the end of the week i loved it. I would have liked to have seen the other side of the river and visited some other areas but with the expo to visit there wasnt much more that could be done in a week!
i didnt feel rested when i returned on Sunday night - but i did feel satisfied that i had seen shanghai and its different elemnts, i had eaten in ver pristine restaurants and from the street and seen the very rich and affluent areas to the very low income and poorer areas, although no less vibrant or lively.
And i re-newed some friendships and made new ones which will hopefully last as well across the globe.

Returning to HK to work was great and arriving back in HK i felt at home. it was a lovely feeling and a telling sign that i might be away from the Uk for a while indeed....

Matt xx

Shanghai is

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Photos

The plane
dragon air - NOT china eastern! ha!

seeds
the 'seed cathedral'