Advertisement
Published: August 26th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Shanghai is a city that has quite a bit of history with Westerners. It was a major trading port, and in the early 1900s there was a sizeable population of them, including Brits, Americans, Germans, French and White Russians who fled the Bolsheviks during the Russian revolution. As you've seen in a few of my entries over the last week, you can really see evidence of the days of pre-Communist Shanghai with all the colonial, and even some deco, architecture around the city. One area where there was a large concentration of Westerners was the "French Concession", which is better known to local Chinese as an area spanning over parts of the Jing'an and Lu wan districts of the city. I won't bore you with what is quickly becoming a shopping and restaurant blog rather than a "travel" blog, but suffice to say that this area certainly isn't disadvantaged versus others throughout Shanghai in that capacity.
To focus on the more unique aspects of this area there were large streets lined with malls and luxury stores, off of which branched quite a few smaller streets canopied by trees to the point where the sun was almost completely blocked out. There
were much more Westerners in this part of town than we've seen in others, and I'm finding that among Westerners I hear a surprising amount of German-speakers. When locals ask us where we are from, they even ask us if we're German. Not sure if anyone reading this can provide some insight or has noticed the same thing but it looks like this is a popular tourist and/or business destination for people living in Germany.
Xintiandi itself is a concentration of shops and restaurants where there are a lot of pedestrian streets boasting food from every European country. The look and feel of the place reminded be a bit of Covent Garden in London, minus the eccentric street performers. We stopped at a great German restaurant for some lunch (and beer, naturally), after which we looked around for a restaurant called Face Bar that we had heard about before coming to Shanghai. It was located on the same property as the Ruijin Hotel, which again was a complex of colonial-style buildings that had several restaurants and bars that we plan on visiting in the very near future. We stopped at a Starbucks for a snack while we were in
Photo 3
Enjoying a beer and a burger! the area and took about half an hour to enjoy a drink and do some people watching from our vantage point on the outside patio looking out onto a busy intersection. I'm still baffled as to how we haven't seen more car accidents so far, given the seemingly chaotic way that people here drive. Somehow it all just works, with only the occasional bump and scratch. As with most busy intersections in town there was a police officer overseeing the flow of traffic and keeping things in relative order. At one point two cars pulled over after crossing the intersection, and on a closer look I could see that they had some damage indicating one of them side-swiped the other. After the police officer walked over to the cars, there was some civil discussion and the police officer processed some paperwork, presumably an accident report, which both drivers signed. One of the cars was a taxi, who made a phone call which prompted some shouting with the person at the other end of the line - he was probably getting a lecture from his boss. In any case I must say that I was very impressed with how orderly and
Photo 4
Very nice shaded streets efficient the process was for dealing with this accident. Typical of this city, there were lots of curious onlookers who came by to inspect the damage, chatted with the drivers, asked some questions of the police officer, then went about their business. Among what seems like a lot of chaos in this city I suppose after 5,000 years of history everyone just accepts the way things are and it works surprisingly well. You certainly see a high police presence here, but it certainly isn't imposing and they seem to be a helpful source for directions and local information.
So that ends my first week in this city. Overall I've been very impressed and pleasantly surprised by it, including the hospitality of the people, the quality (and quantity!!) of great places to eat and shop, and the ease of moving around the city. Monday is my first day at work, so I'm sure this is just the beginning of what will be a great experience here.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0326s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb