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Published: January 16th 2011
We had spent a day in Shanghai on our way to Guilin and Yangshuo last spring. It seemed reasonable to spend our three day New Year’s Weekend there. It had to be warmer than last year’s trip to Harbin. Or so we thought.
Shanghai was a lot closer than I remembered and less than two hours after liftoff we were standing in the Shanghai airport reading the sign that said the subway stopped at 9:00 and it was now 9:30. Oops. Most of our trips have involved arranging a driver to pick us up but we knew the Shanghai subway went right from the airport to within three blocks of our hotel. This had seemed like a good option. Sigh.
Unlike many parts of China, the process of getting a cab at the airport is extremely well organized. There is a railing system to channel the folks who want cabs up to a taxi director who determines where you want to go and what cab is appropriate. Of course, it helps if you can speak Chinese. We are a little short in this area and the lineup grew quite long while the director tried to figure out, with the
Lots of traffic
But there is a certain beauty to the chaos with the lighting under the elevated roadway.aid of two cab drivers, exactly where we wanted to go. The lady behind us even got into the act. Finally, one driver decided he knew where our hotel was and away we went. The drive is over an hour but the lights were quite neat as we approached the city. Except for the one on the meter where the number seemed to be increasing at a frightening speed. On our previous trip we were sharing with two others but this was all ours. I remembered enough to be pretty sure he went the fastest way and we pulled up at the hotel with a fare of 175 kuai. Wow! That seemed high. But we did the math and realized it was only $27. We pay around $50. for an airport run in Victoria and it is not as far.
The hotel was built in the 1930s but has been updated several times. Other teachers had stayed there and quite liked it. We like the central location. We were upgraded to a suite but it was no Kempinski. The breakfast was not included but was fine and the staff was friendly. Can’t ask for much more than that.
Lotus building
This building made our last Shanghai blog but this time we could see it from our hotel room. New Year's Eve In our previous trip, Shannon had figured out the subway system and we zipped around town like locals. This trip we decided to walk everywhere we could. We sauntered down Nanjing Lu, a pedestrian only shopping street until we got to Renmin (People’s) Square. The museum is located here and we wanted to make sure we knew where it was as we planned to return later. I’m not 100%!s(MISSING)ure but I think walking was faster than the subway.
We had spotted a section of town that looked like Embassy or Consulate row. As Canada was one of the country names we decided we would walk over in that direction as it was also where Element Fresh, a great restaurant chain, was located. We never did find the country locations and Element Fresh also eluded us. We tried another restaurant, Wagas, that seemed popular with the locals. It was excellent. Turned out it was opened by a Dane whose last name was Christensen, just like Dianne’s. He claims he couldn’t find a decent sandwich in Shanghai so he opened a restaurant that has, so far, turned into 17 locations in the city. And they
TV Tower
The tower across the Huangpu in Pudong is always a beautiful sight. have wireless so I took out my netbook and Googled “Element Fresh”. And, yes, I was walking around Shanghai with my computer in my backpack. The restaurant we wanted was about 100 feet from where we were but the sign was almost impossible to see from the street. Oh well.
The area we were in borders on the French Concession, the area of Shanghai controlled by the French in the “old days” after the Opium Wars. There are amazing buildings and homes in this area so we continued our walkabout. We had seen several historical places on the map: the place where the first Congress of the Communist Party was held in 1921 and the houses of Sun Yat-Sen and Zhou en-Lai. The people at the museum had helped us figure out where they were but we hadn’t realized just how far they were from Wagas. By the time we had worked our way over to their neighborhood, they were closed!
Hmmmmm. What to do? It’s dark, it’s New Year’s Eve and we are getting hungry again. Out came the map and we charted a different course back to Element Fresh where we enjoyed a very pleasant dinner.
It may be New Year's but...
they do like their Christmas decorations. Luckily, the restaurant was close to a subway stop and we took the subway the rest of the way home. We figured we had walked about 15 kilometers. So after a New Year’s Eve glass of wine, we naturally went out for another walk. This time we just walked over to see the sights of the Bund which is a beautiful place to be at night. You may wonder why we have no fireworks pictures. We didn’t make it to midnight and have no idea what fireworks there were.
New Year’s Day We teamed up with Jamie, a former Maple Leaf teacher now living in Shanghai, to go to Zhūjiājiǎo, one of the many water villages in the area. Shanghai is in the Yangtze delta so there are many lakes, rivers, streams and canals in the area. The town we visited is known as the Venice of Shanghai. Supposedly over 1,700 years old, it is crisscrossed with canals and claims 36 stone bridges. While there are many interesting structures, especially the Kezhi gardens, there are plenty of souvenir shops and places to buy food. Lots of tourist junk.
It was a pretty cold day with quite
Getting ready for Chinese New Year
Lights and decorations are going up everywhere in preparation for the Big Event even though it isn't until February this year. a breeze. Most of the places where you could buy food had a few tables that maybe were under cover but usually open, at least at one end. Not that appealing. Several had sliding doors to get the cold wind out (certainly not to keep the heat in). They all had a person outside trying to entice the passersby to taste their wares. When they saw westerners they switched their sales pitch to include “Air conditioning”. We know that the HVAC equipment over here is both heating and cooling but that sales pitch certainly didn’t appeal to us.
We were just about out of the area when we realized we had better eat something as we had a long drive back to the city. The next stall we came to could make us jiăozi, dumplings with some kind of filling. We asked what kind of filling. “meat” and “vegetable” was the translated answer. What kind of meat? Meat. Hmmmm. OK. We were hungry. The “dining room” had a roof and three sides around its three tables. The couple running it, and their daughter-in-law, were very happy to have us as customers. The dumplings were served in a bowl of
Shopping Centre
More remnants of Christmas. Pretty upscale shopping centre, just one of many. delicious broth which was really hot. We sat there holding the bowls to try to warm up our hands. And all for 8 kuai each ($1.25). Just right. Lots of smiles and picture taking when we left.
We drove a different way back to get another view of the city. Nick stopped in another part of “downtown” that had been converted to a pedestrian shopping area. Fascinating diversity of shops, eating places and artisan’s work areas. We wished we had more time and warmer weather to better enjoy it.
After warming up at the hotel, Dianne and I set out to find some dinner. There was a Wagas restaurant near the hotel but it was closing early because it was New Year’s Day. We wandered down Nanjing Road pedestrian mall. It was almost wall-to-wall people. This end of the street was mainly high end shops plus shopping centers. No obvious restaurants. As there are often restaurants on each floor of the shopping malls, we headed up the escalators. Sure enough, the restaurants were there but there were as many as 20 people sitting outside on little stools, waiting for a table. Hmmmm. No go there. We continued down
Nanjing Lu
This pedestrian mall starts at the Bund and goes for blocks. Lots of high end shops. Nanjing Road until we saw a sign for Black Canyon Thai Food. We stopped to see if we could find it and immediately a menu was pressed into our hands. They had finders out in the street looking for people like us. The chap took us into the back of the building where there was a very nice restaurant that wasn’t even busy. While this could have been a bad sign, the food was actually very nice and the service excellent. We even chatted with a young couple who we thought were Russian. Turns out they were speaking Russian as it was their common language. He was Belgian and she was Ukrainian.
Sunday We had found St Francis Xavier Church on the Internet and thought we knew where we were going. The subway took us right to the door in no time at all. We had planned to meet Jamie for brunch at another Element Fresh. Like the other one, it’s easy to find if you know where it is. After walking around for a while we phoned Jamie who gave us additional directions. Even with those we walked a bit before we found it.
The Church
French influence?
Champs Elysee? This is near what was the French Concession. We also have a huge complex in Dalian with this name. was huge and quite full. It was an English service and the Chinese priest had a pretty good message. The choir was excellent. The people were so friendly. I guess you would hope so, being as its Church, but you never know.
We took the subway halfway home and managed to find the two places we missed on Friday: the place where the first Congress of the Communist Party was held and Sun Yat-Sen’s house. Interesting places. The house had been purchased for Dr. Sun with funds raised in Canada!
After yet another visit to Wagas we picked our bags up at the hotel and jumped on the subway to the airport. The time to the airport is about the same as a cab if there is no traffic (for the cab, not the subway) and the cost was 7 kuai each. 14 versus 175. Hmmmm No brainer there, and the subway drops you right in the terminal. You just have to figure out why everyone is getting off the train about 7-8 stops from the end and getting on another train to the airport itself. They don’t mention this in the stuff we read.
Home sweet home Skyline
The skyline is often an interesting mix of old and new. We are always amazed at how open "downtown" is. Our driver was there to pick us up and whisk us home tired but ready to start the final push to Winter holidays. Tough life.
Two weeks later we are packing for our trip to Canada. Yahoo!
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