Shanghai Showers, Sightseeing, Supper and Show

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I really can’t say enough about the Shanghai Westin on the Bund. This is a great place to stay and it’s understandable why it is the preferred hotel among our many fellow Viking Cruisers. Our bed is a very comfortable king, and I’ve mentioned the spectacular view from our corner room. The ceiling above the bed is recessed, and that is recessed again above the rest of the room and adjoining bathroom, so immediately it becomes and interesting customized living space and not just some boxy hotel room. I marveled for some time about the circular cut-out design in our granite bathroom floor. The walls and floor and shower are done in an attractive black, white and gray granite with a smooth marble-like look. I next noticed the circular recessed ceiling above the floor design to house the bathroom lighting fixture, a circular hanging light with reflective lighting from the matted silvery coating inside the recessed ceiling feature. Our adjacent shower and happy room both have matching side-by-side fogged glass doors. I’ll clarify “happy room” later, as it’s a term Arnold would enlighten us with later on today’s tour. Just as he would clarify the importance of circles in Chinese architecture (along with squares). I had wondered if this might be the reason for the expense of cutting stone to form a 3 foot diameter circle of stone in the middle of the floor. Upon closer inspection you can see the circle is composed of 4 pie-shaped slices expertly crafted together to make the seams difficult to spot. For the Chinese, circles symbolize heaven and squares symbolize earth. And as we would also learn today, Feng shui plays an important part in architectural designs in Shanghai. Other amenities of our room included TV with many American offerings (CNN, ESPN, CS/MS/NBC, HBO, DISCOVERY etc.); alas, no HISTORY channel so to Sharon’s relief, no “Pawn Stars”. And our room also had something I don’t recall in any other hotel room that I’ve stayed in: a bathroom scale. Maybe I just haven’t stayed in enough truly high-end hotels.



We had the complimentary buffet breakfast, although we learned that this is perhaps the one place where bottle water is not included. They do include coffee, which Sharon and I don’t drink, but juices as well. Sharon asked about apple juice but was told that only orange was available. That wasn’t exactly true, as I also spotted pineapple and apple juice as well. After breakfast, we met our group and Arnold in the lobby, ready for the day of sightseeing in Shanghai. Arnold had warned us to be prepared for rain, so bring the rain-gear and umbrellas. We brought our backpack and loaded it down with everything that we might need. Arnold replaced our official Viking name tags with new ones which we wrote our names on. How was I supposed to know you’re only supposed to put your first name on the tag? Sharon corrected me before I wrote out her tag… next time I’ll write her tag first! All day I’m walking around and people are greeting me by my first and last name. Is this some sort of cruising inside joke I hadn’t experience yet?



Our bus departed taking us to the Old City. From the spot the bus parked Arnold pointed out some of the old decaying buildings of Old Shanghai, juxtaposed in front of skyscrapers rising from the rubble. Arnold speculated that before long these half demolished buildings would be overrun by the spreading urban sprawl of progress. From here we walked into some much better preserved parts of Old Shanghai, noting the winged eaves, ornate in their rich design. We walked across the zigzag bridge with nine turns across a koi pond containing an abundant number of these mostly orange and some white carp. Nine is a lucky number for the Chinese. In the states, the koi I recall seeing are almost always the striped orange and white variety, in fact, I had believed that that coloring was required to call them koi. There were a few of these here also; and, Arnold called them hybrids.



The bridge took us to the entrance of the Yu Garden. The garden is actually a walled domicile containing many meandering pathways amid water features and gardens and rock formations and the various buildings that make up the entire home. Arnold explains how all of the water is flowing through the garden, and connected to the larger koi pond we had walked across, and that water too is not allowed to stagnate so as to sustain the abundance of life in the water… mostly koi, but also turtles. It’s supposed to bring luck to see a turtle, and we spotted quite a few. The first building is where Yu would have greeted guests, an imposing open air structure. Guests of more than a casual nature might have been invited into the rest of the garden, for a meal, entertainment, conversation, or relaxing with the courtesans of the day.



The first thing Arnold informed/warned us about the architecture was about the many thresholds and steps into and out of buildings, common in Chinese architecture. Combined with the zigzag bridge, these are designed to keep out the evil spirits; since, such spirits only fly straight and can’t maneuver through the zigzag bridge or up and over the thresholds. This is also where Arnold informed us about the significance of circles and squares, themes that recur Chinese architecture. Unusual rocks, worn by water, and having numerous interconnecting holes are also highly prized by the ancient Chinese, seen as having special significance and powers at keeping out the evil spirits, these are often strategically placed throughout the garden and at the entrance of various buildings. The most prized of these stones is called the exquisite jade rock despite its limestone composition. It had once been owned by the emperor, and rather than allow it to fall into the hands of Kubla Kahn when this adversary had threatened his rule, he had the stone tossed into Shanghai Harbor. Believing this story, Yu had had many divers search for the stone, and after considerable effort, the stone now sitting in the garden is believed to be this original stone. Comparisons of art works seem to confirm this, as many drawings were rendered of the original stone; and despite the new stone having more interconnecting holes than the original, this was attributed to the additional two-hundred years the stone had survived in Shanghai Harbor. One secluded garden in the compound was called the Chamber of 10,000 flowers and is said to nearly always have some flowers in bloom. While in the Garden, it started to rain, and I even broke out the umbrella and Sharon donned her jacket and hood.



Yu had faced some danger from his emperor, due to it being reported that he had a dragon in the garden, an architectural feature that showed the beast laying atop a fence. Since dragons were reserved for the emperor, Yu was summoned to court to explain himself, at the peril of his own life and the lives of his family. Yu managed to explain that everyone knows that dragons have five toes, and the creature in his garden has just four toes on a foot, and so his creature is not a dragon and there has been no breech of protocol. The emperor seemed to be satisfied. After visiting the garden we had some time to visit local merchants, and we were accosted more than once by some street vendors seeking to sell us Rolexes for fifty dollars. Arnold suggested that if anyone needed to use the restrooms, which he said that he would refer to as “Happy Rooms” from now on, to mean, a Western style restroom because when you get to one such room when you need one it makes you so, so happy. We haven’t experience the alternative yet, but we’ve already been warned that you need to bring your own paper! We assembled at the Starbucks in the courtyard, and from there went to the bus to go to our next venue. By now the rain had mostly stopped.



Our next stop was at a silk factory, where we learned of the painstaking process of hand-making exquisite silk rugs. Since 2000, the number of skilled workers willing to do the tedious meticulous cross-looping of threads has fallen in half, from 5,000 to 2,500 today. I heard over and over that young people today just aren’t willing to do this kind of work, they’re looking for the easy way, the fast way, of getting ahead and making money. It can take one to three years to complete just one rug, and the work is beautiful. We saw the difference in 300 threads per inch, and 600 threads per inch and 900 threads per inch. The remarkable change in color and brightness became evident as sample rugs were rotated in front of us to reveal incredible changes right before our eyes. Typical machine made rugs will have 100 threads per inch. We saw some of the completed examples of silk embroidery that showed incredible life-like images of wildlife, that were difficult to distinguish from a photograph. One of a snow tiger was everyone’s favorite… and just think, everything was 30% off just for Viking Cruisers on this day. And if you believe that… Lunch was downstairs at the Mongolian BarBQ.



It was Sharon’s first time at a Mongolian BarBQ, no surprise there. What was surprising is that I was the only person in our tour group that had been to one before. That being the case, I guess it was a great new experience for people; I know it was a fun experience for me the first time that I had gone to one. I decided to try the local beer, which turned out to be a very light beer (and not my favorite). My mother would probably have enjoyed this beer that came in a 600ml bottle. The choice of meat were beef, lamb, pork and chicken; and, the hand-drawn images of a cow, lamb, pig, and chicken were a nice touch. There was quite a bit more fat on the pieces of meat than I recall from the times I’d gone before; and the selection of vegetables was more limited. They had the red-chili sauce which I enjoyed, and garlic and ginger and sesame oil. Sharon tried the beef and chicken, with some bean sprouts (okay, I made her put them in… it’s the first and probably last time Sharon tries something I recommended, but Arnold had recommended it too. After all, what is Mongolian BarBQ without bean sprouts?) Sharon sort of enjoyed it, except for the fatty parts of the beef which she couldn’t eat, and of course the bean sprouts that she didn’t care for. (I guess we all saw that one coming!)



After lunch we went on to see the Shanghai museum, a four-story building, the top two floors having a circular outside design atop the bottom two floors which are square. The building contained quite a few interesting exhibits going back in time over Chinese history, a section of coins that I wanted to see. I now know about round coins with square holes… yes indeed, even they have that round-square thing going on for heaven and earth! The hole in the coins allows multiple coins to be collected together on a string. We saw the jade exhibit, and of course the pottery and vase exhibit. There was furniture and many more artifacts. Arnold had recommended that we start on the fourth floor and work our way down, and that was a good recommendation. It was on the second floor that we found the Tea Room and Sharon and I split a much needed Coca-Cola for 10 Yuan. But mostly we needed a chance to sit down. It wasn’t long before we were joined by another couple and we spent a pleasant 20 minutes chatting until it was time to return to the bus.



We all must have looked dead-tired, because Arnold made an executive decision to return to the hotel for a couple hours relaxation before dinner and the acrobatic show. Plan-A was to visit the Bund (German for the shore) to get a day-time view of what we saw the previous night, if the rains let up. Well it wasn’t raining, but we all had yet to recover from the trip over to China. Plan-B is to visit the Bund tomorrow morning. Arnold recommended not taking a nap before dinner, so that we remain exhausted for a good night sleep tonight, advice that Sharon and I both found easy to ignore. It was a much needed hour and one-half of rest, and it got us through the night of food and entertainment, and as it turned out, we had no trouble sleeping until the light was coming through our window in the morning.



Dinner was next door to our hotel in a basement restaurant that served Chinese cuisine “family style”. This means that food was placed on a Lazy-Susan in the middle of the round dining tables, and small portions of the various dishes were taken by diners to their individual plates and bowls. There were three tables for ten ready for Arnold’s group. Diners had the option of using chop-sticks or a fork, and four appetizers were already in place for us on the Lazy-Susan. These included Vegetarian Duck, which Arnold explained is vegetables but prepared as you would cook duck. All I can say is that I won’t be happy if the Peking Duck dinner planned later in our cruise winds up tasting like this. Not that this was bad, it’s just not in the Peking Duck category. We still laugh at my lobster roll experience on Prince Edward Island where getting anyone (me especially) looking forward to a lobster roll experience and then getting served mayo and celery on a hot dog bun. Sharon’s aunt Flo had been concerned that I hadn’t gotten a decent lobster roll, because they really are delicious when done right… and so is Peking Duck, which I have had an a couple of memorable occasions. The barbeque fish stick was my favorite of these four dishes, none of which Sharon would try. If this dinner had been tomorrow, Good Friday, perhaps I could have convinced Sharon to try the fish appetizer, because it really was tasty and no hint of being fish at all. Sharon did try half of her pork portion, which was easily in my opinion the best item served tonight. It came with a pepper mixture and a sweet water that you could put on the pork before eating, and as I’ve mentioned, this dish was delicious. Sharon also tried the rice, which everyone agreed was delicious. I noticed that everyone was using chop-sticks; except, for Sharon and myself. Sharon also partook of the pan fried noodles. There were a couple of vegetable dishes, including the braised green beans; although, I was expecting something spicier. There was also baby green bean sprouts, which were more an interesting novelty than anything else. I really enjoyed the spicy tofu. The final dish consisted of watermelon and baby tomatoes. Sharon wanted to try the watermelon, so I endeavored to pick up a slice of watermelon for her with my chop sticks. The table was quite bemused by a number of false starts I was having with the very slippery ivory-like chop sticks; but, after several false starts I managed to get a piece of watermelon to Sharon’s plate. The table applauded my efforts and the rest of them had various success for getting their watermelon though all were much quicker than me.



After dinner we went to the theatre, and it appears that Viking has the prime seats in the center reserved for its cruises. We were about ten rows from the very front and sitting directly in front of center stage, so we were quite happy. The show began on time and started with a spectacular unicycle exhibition with six girls doing incredible feats. The progressed to doing other incredible feats on unicycles with no seats. In their finale one girl on a seat-less unicycle, was hurled tumbling through the air over two other girls and landing on a second seat-less unicycle being carefully held in place by a third girl so that falling through the air her feet found the pedals and managed to pull it off riding away with a big smile. You truly had to see it to believe it. And the evening only got better from there; except, for the card-lady who kept pulling one to four cards, apparently out of thin air. The thing is, she didn’t do anything that was worth watching over and over and over again for five, or six, or ten minutes. I was one of a number of recent arrivals who found it difficult to keep my eyes open for this routine, and the person next to Sharon did fall asleep (no, not me). All of the other acts; however, would not allow you to fall asleep, they were that captivating. The second act featured one male athlete showing off incredible strength, flexibility and balance, doing what can only be described as impossible. One of the favorite acts included audience participation, and since the person selected was from our group, we knew it wasn’t a shill so it made it that much more exciting. They needed someone to stand in front of the target that the expert knife thrower would be throwing knives, just to the left or right of the human bulls-eye. The act was performed by the knife thrower and his partner, who decided that they needed a member of the audience to take his place as the human in front of the target. Communication with the audience was done in mime, and it was hilarious. After offering the knife thrower the opportunity to show his skills to use a blindfold (actually a coat over his head), he chose instead to allow the coat to cover the head of the volunteer. It’s probably not a good idea to sit on the aisle at such shows, even if you’re nine rows back! After a number of comedic false starts, in which the assistant interrupts the thrower just prior to an attempt, a knife was thrown and strike just to the right of the participants head. The blind fold was removed showing the potential victim the knife strike just inches from his head. Somehow he had the nerve to allow this to be repeated just to the left of his head. And then a two knife attempt just under each outstretched arm. And for the final knife the participant was asked to hold a balloon between his thighs and under you know what. It took a bit of time to convince him to finish this act, but eventually the knife thrower did pop the balloon. What the participant didn’t know yet was that the knife thrower was tossing the knife to the assistant, and he was sticking them in the target and then removing the blindfold. The audience was in stiches.





All in all a very good day in Shanghai.

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Photos

Sparrow wings
We didn't try them

Tea House by Yu Garden
This is the oldest building in old Shanghai