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Published: October 30th 2009
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Outside the Museum of Art
Nice kite and majestic skyscrapers in the background It was a nice day today, hazy to clear sky and about 20 degrees. We caught a taxi to the Shanghai Museum. It’s a nice new building with lots of marble however it’s an arts museum. It had quite old statues, old writings, water paintings and the history of money. The most interesting thing I thought, was the use of spade and arrow shaped coins a couple of thousand years ago and then the adoption of paper money commencing in the 10 century! We then walked around the Peoples Square with its immaculate lawns and white pigeons (no-one walks on the lawns in public parks). Squashed in between the massive and uniquely styled skyscrapers just off the square were a few old late 19th and early 20th century buildings. We then walked down a very long marbled tiled mall. This part of Shanghai was obviously for the middle class because the streets did not have any motor scooters, bicycles or rusty tricycles - the roads are just for cars. Cops were always patrolling the mall either on motor bike or in a police golf cart. The main intersection was strictly controlled by a cop so conspicuously, that he grabbed every car
Old City Market
Inspecting the scooters to figure out how they are converted to battery power that ran a red light - now that’s not what happens outside that immediate area where the road rules are only limited to mostly driving on the correct side of the road and trying to obey green lights. We then grabbed a taxi back to where we finished last night but this time we found the Yu Yuan Garden. This was a 16th century walled building complex with a 16th century garden built for the local administrator of the emperors. It’s not what we expected - the architecture was then about creating large 3 metre rockeries, meandering thick vertical slate pathways, pools with goldfish, trees and buildings where the curved roof ridges are covered by big game animals and mythical creatures. Originally Yu Yuan Garden and its buildings overlooked the main river but now centuries later, it’s locked in tightly, by the Old City market and numerous buildings and roads. We sailed out of town later that night after waiting for a gap in the barges river traffic to clear - they even run at night and without starboard and port lights!. The run out the river was amazing. We passed barges being loaded in the dark by excavators on
Yu Yuan Garden
One of the former chief administrators buildings - worth including here the shoreline with the only light being the light on the excavators arm! we also passed many ship yards and being so high us on the Lido deck at about 8 storeys, we had a grand view inside those shipyards - work it seems never stops in Shanghai
So that was it, Shanghai highlights were the many grand skyscrapers, congested traffic and roads, a clean and efficient subway system and the people were ever willing to assist and off course, there were those street hawkers looking out for any Europeans to sell watches.
PS - so far in Japan and China we haven’t seen a gun - not even the police carry them. !
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