Shanghai

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One big flight sale and Mr. and Mrs. Lee have found themselves on a last minute trip back in China! We really couldn't be more excited, going to Shanghai together 4 years ago during the World Expo, we spent 5 relentless days at the expo alone before leaving the city. Funnily enough, we didn't see a single thing outside of it so it's almost like we have never actually been here at all! This trip was also going to be a first in that we were going with other people, we know that we are very good at traveling together but have no idea if we play well with others. However, our adventure got off to a bit of a different start then we anticipated when our travel companions had a slight hang up at the airport, unfortunately they weren't able to get out of Calgary and had to cancel their trip. We pressed on to Seattle and headed to Shanghai from there, just the two of us back out in this crazy world.

We took the Maglev train at 300km/hr from the Pudong International to the metro station where after 7 minutes of being in Shanghai we lost 2 Yuan to a "helpful" lady while buying our metro tickets. We laughed and walked away as this will probably be the first of many times that our wallet slowly gets chipped away at. We got out at the East Nanjing Rd Station with our big packs on and walked along the brightly lit neon signs with hoards of people on our way to check in to our hotel. It was late and we were pretty tired from our journey so we called it a night with big plans for the next day.

The next day we planned to hit up a bunch of places but our plan was slowly derailed after missing a street sign. We started off at Nanjing Rd checking out some shops and stopping in at M&M world with 3000 other people. We made our way to the People's Square cramming our way through these tunnels filled with old people sitting behind umbrellas with tons of signs. Trying to figure out what everyone was doing there and what the signs were for, I recognized the character for Woman and then noticed that there were stats listed - age, height, weight, more things in Chinese that I couldn't read. Binnson and I guessed - maybe they are selling women? But why would these old people do that so publicly, that would be weird... Maybe there was some kind of tragedy and these people are looking for lost loved ones? It wasn't until later that night after a quick search that we learned that it was actually a "marriage market", elders looking for mates for their children. There was a lot of things happening in the park: men playing cards, teenagers singing songs while reading lyrics off their phones, people playing instruments, and a man fishing for goldfish.

Our plan afterwards was to make a quick stop in Xintiandi on our way to Yuyuan. We were walking down the popular shopping road, Huaihai, and must have got distracted by all the fancy high end stores and completely missed the street that we were supposed to turn on. We walked for a REALLY long time before we decided to turn back, we found ourselves at the Sinan Mansions as it started to rain and get windy. Now that we were cold and hungry we started to really not care about Xintiandi but at the same time we were having internal battles because we had been walking for so long to check it out. We stopped at a basement bazaar for some sushi and suddenly we were in Xintiandi and it turned out to just be another big shopping area. Definitely no lack of shopping in Shanghai ;-). We hopped on the metro and headed back to Nanjing, our legs were tired after putting on a nice 15 km already but we kept on going to the river wanting to get some skyline photos while it was dark out. We headed back down the Nanjing Rd stopping for some yummy milkteas and eggtarts before heading back to our hotel, warm snacks always feel so good after a cold day.

So why doesn't it seem like we are in China? Has so much really changed in 4 years? And why are we so helpless navigating without our precious google maps? These questions keep popping into my mind as we encounter our various surroundings.

We headed to Shanghai Railway Station first thing the next morning to book our tickets to Hangzhou for the next day. We had also noticed that the Jade Buddha Temple was right near by the Railway Station on the little tourist map that we had but realized that we had left the map at the hotel and had no idea how to get there after we purchased our tickets to Hangzhou. Usually we just GPS ourselves on offline maps but this whole google blockage has been messing up our navigating skills. We read what we thought were the directions on a travel review and hopped on the metro.... the wrong metro.... after a big detour, we emerged on to what we thought was the right road and walked around looking for the temple. What we found was REAL China. FINALLY. I didn't even care that we couldn't find the temple because I was pumped to finally see kitchens on bicycles, dirty streets, dishes being washed on sidewalks, etc. So nice to be away from the big shiny department stores and polished tourist roads. We gave up and went back to the metro to try our luck with Jing'an temple.

Well, maybe we are jet legged.... or maybe we are actually just useless without maps.... but we circled around a block that we were sure the temple was on for a couple laps thinking that we had totally lost our minds not being able to find it. Finally we got an address and realized we were just 2 blocks away. In the meantime, we stumbled upon a firefighting convention at the Exhibition hall so we stopped and checked it out. That is definitely a bonus of getting lost in Shanghai... you still see so much that you don't even really notice that you are missing what you are looking for. Finally we found the Jing'an Temple, strangely located amongst super modern malls and skyscrapers, the beautiful old style buildings with golden accents were really refreshing. We hung out there exploring the various rooms and discovering different buddhas amongst the facility, meanwhile... three monks were standing in a hall texting or playing games on their phones... for some reason that ruins monks for me.

After the temple, we headed up to Royal China for a delicious dim sum meal before going to Yuyuan. Yuyuan was so much fun, the place was absolutely packed and the food flowing around there had us regretting eating so much dim sum as we could have ate for days here. We ran around taking photos of food, buildings, people, and ourselves before walking along a market alley back towards the river. Again, market alleys full of anything and everything and likely tons of knock offs, that is what I remember, none of this Nanjing Road type stuff :-)

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

China
Glad you found a flight on sale.

[Sarah]

Bahahaha!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!