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Published: March 14th 2009
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One Big Modern City and One Tiny Traditional Village - both freezing cold! Shanghai - a.k.a the Pearl of the Orient or the Paris of the east. We had heard great reviews from many and we were looking forward to seeing this super city with an interesting colonial past and a mind-boggling speed of development in recent years.
Much to our disappointment, we did not particularly enjoy the place and generally found it to be a huge, cold, damp, and very muddy construction site - with a distinct lack of English (aside from the now obligatory "hello copy watch, copy handbag, copy sunglasses). Strolling the bund (if you could get there through the construction sites and closed streets) was a bit like running a gauntlet of hawkers!
Shanghai is hosting a massive World Expo in 2010 so construction work is everywhere. We decided that after the World Expo and in summer it would be better, but right now we felt like it was a bit allover the place with very little structure. Not a great vibe for nerdy planners!
However, we did enjoy the contrast between the old buildings constructed by the English (and various other colonial
Nanjing Road East
supposedly China's golden shopping mile powers) along the bund and the new uber-modern financial district constructed in the last 15 years on the opposite side of the river. It was interesting to see that the Chinese now make it very clear to the world that they now own and operate the old colonial buildings with at least four Chinese flags flying from each one!
It was in Shanghai that we joined our Intrepid Journey tour group of nine travelers and our Chinese group leader (who had lived in NZ for four years and studied at Waiariki Polytech in Rotorua!). All were nice people in there 20s and everyone got on and played nicely together for the most part.
After spending the previous two weeks undertaking a lot of guess work when ordering food at Chinese restaurants, it was awesome just to have multiple dishes ordered for us and shared with the group - which is really how Chinese food is designed to be eaten. Certainly better than sharing two dishes between us and hoping at least one was edible! The Chinese food has been nice, but we wouldn't turn Chinese just so we could eat it every day.
Our first stop on
Simon in the Yuyuan Bazaar
Looking at least a foot taller than everyone else! our Intrepid Journey was a beautiful old town called Xitang located on the grand canal, about a three hour bus ride from Shanghai. Lots of old traditional buildings fronting the canal with red lanterns hanging from each of the buildings which acted almost like street lights (lots of red in every photo). We spent most of the day wandering the little old streets around the canals and trying to keep warm!
Our guesthouse backed right onto the canal with greatviews up and down and an awesomelittle dock/deck area - which proved very useful for drinking a few of the large bottles of beer we found for 3 chinese yuan (about 85 NZ cents)! Absolutely stunning! Small town China is far more insightful!
We're pleased we saw Shanghai, but wouldn't hurry back. However it was fantastic to get a view of small town China, which so far seems to be much more to our liking!
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Rob Barg
non-member comment
I should start shopping at the Yuyuan Bazaar
I love the picture of Simon at the Bazaar - I think I should move to China. You guys couldn't make any more short jokes! I hope all is well - it's been a long time! Awesome blog, keep it up. Rob