Advertisement
Published: October 20th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Today was a full day of touring virtually nonstop from around 9am until we got back to the hotel around 10:30pm.
First stop was the Shanghai Museum. Four levels of amazing pieces from Chinese history. We had around 90 minutes in here, which is probably an hour not enough if you really want to appreciate all that is in the museum, that is of course if you like museums. Judith and I managed to look thoroughly at two of levels which included the some paintings (no photos allowed in this section) ceramics and pottery on the second level and furniture from Ming and Qing dynasties and Jade sculptures on the fourth levels. We didn’t see anything on the first level, and only briefly looked at the calligraphy and the seals on the third level.
Some amazing items in the museum, you do get a feel for the age of the civilisation when viewing artefacts that are 5000 years old like an axe made from Jade or pottery pots even older.
After the museum, we headed off to the Yu Gardens which is located in Old City section of Shanghai. The garden took 20 years to be built in
the mid 1500’s by a resident (Pan Yunduan) of Shanghai to please his father in his old age. However the farther died before the garden was completed. The gardens have been damaged over the last few hundred years, in particular in the last 150 years during the opium wars and Taiping Rebellion. Fortunately the Shanghai government took over management and repaired the gardens during the mid 1950s and opened it to the general public in 1961.
The place was a mass of people, not sure if anybody could find any serenity here as the designer intended. In saying that, it was an amazing garden and if you ignored the thrash of human flesh, you could put your mind back 400 years to imagine what it would be like walking around the gardens. The Yu Garden’s, of course like most tourist parts of China so far, are full of merchants both street venders and those that have stalls selling anything and everything.
After Yu Garden and lunch over in the Pudong area, we had the opportunity to look at the Bund from the East side of the Huangpu River. The Bund is currently under renovations for the forthcoming Shanghai
Expo in 2010.
While we were in the Pudong area, we went up the Jin Mao Tower, which is the second highest building in China at 88 levels. On the eighth level there is the Jin Mao Observatory where you can get an birds eye view of Shanghai. The lifts to the 88 level takes 45 seconds, which is an impressive ride, it would be cool to have the lifts on the outside of the building, but there would likely be a few lost stomachs!
Our next adventure was to go for a ride on the Maglev Train to the Pudong International Airport. The maximum speed of the train is 431km/h, and takes around 8 minutes to get to the Airport. However the government has spent so much money building the train that it will take around 60 years to pay for it! It is very cool when the two trains pass each other.
By this stage of the day, everybody was fairly tired, however we still hard two more stops, the Jiangnan Silk Boutique Museum and the former French Concession. The silk museum gave us a bit of history of silk and showed us the process
which they make silk products. I guess the main purpose of the place is to sell their products to tourists, and possibly locals. Well, my sister convinced me to buy a quilt cover after she bought a sheet and quilt set so the shipping fees back to Australia will be cheaper. Ohh well, they look good though. Our last stop of the day and also our last Shanghai stop is the former French Concession which has been renovated (with the influence of Jackie Chan) and now consists mainly of bars, clubs, cafes, and restaurants. A lot of westerners hang out in this area, I think I saw more westerners here than the rest of my time so far in Shanghai. The place is a hub of activity during the evening, it would be nice to see the place during the time, maybe next time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 6; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0428s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb