SHANGHAI pt1

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Sunday 13th February

We arrived into Shanghai under the darkness of night and our tour guide holding our name board up tonight is Diana. As usual her English is very good and we are ushered to our waiting cab and driven off towards the city. Its about 40 minutes drive into Shanghai and already we can sense the enormity of the place as towering buildings shadow the roads and the distant glow of the city gets closer.

Shanghai s the most populous city in China, located in eastern China and sits at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The population is a staggering near 20 million!
Due to its rapid growth in the last two decades, Shanghai has again become one of the world's leading cities, exerting influence over finance, commerce, fashion, and culture.

Shanghai is renowned for its historical landmarks such as The Bund and Yuyuan Garden, and its extensive yet growing Pudong skyline. It hosted the World Expo in 2010, attracting 73 million visitors and is described as being the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China.

We disappeared under a tunnel and reappear up among some brilliant looking buildings near The Bund and the lights are extraordinary. There's an array of colours projecting from each building along the Bund which are of Victorian Design. Diana explains a little about the history of this street and we're going to visit this area later on the week. Its not far to our Hotel from here and as we glance to our left we can see the impressive Shanghai Skyline which looks fantastic and we can see the Shanghai Financial Tower and Oriental Pearl Tower protruding through the thick mist.

Hengsheng Peninsula International Hotel is just around the corner from The bund area and we are bowled over at the quality of the hotel room. Up on the 17th floor we have great views across the city plus our room is fully furnished with free internet, large tv and ensuite bathroom which incidentally has a large glass window separating it from the bedroom. Thankfully theres a curtain to hide behind while having a shower or when your sitting on the toilet reading the financial times! 😊

We get unpacked and sort ourselves out as we're here for four nights. I took a wander around the block to find a shop to buy some water as tap water is a big no no even for brushing your teeth. Its felt safe enough walking down the streets around here and there's a shop that understands the point and smile method nearby.

Monday 14th February

Diana meets us downstairs after we finished our lovely breakfast and we're taken across town for our fist stop at the Shanghai National Museum. Designed by a local architect, the new museum building is designed in the shape of an ancient bronze cooking vessel. Also the building has a round top and a square base, symbolizing the ancient Chinese perception of the world as "round sky, square earth".
The museum has a collection of over 120,000 pieces, including bronze, ceramics, calligraphy, furniture, jades, ancient coins, paintings, seals, sculptures, minority art and foreign art. It has eleven galleries and three special temporary exhibition halls.

We concentrated mainly on the bottom floor exhibitions which house the Famous bronze ware and ceramics which are all hundreds of years old if not a thousand. We have mobile headsets which talk us through the various stuff on display and its quite interesting and some of the bronze ware wine vessels are unbelievably complex in design. We spent over a hour in the whole building just walking around and up and down the escalators taking it all in and to be honest there's too much to take it in such a short time.

We left the Museum and headed off towards Pudong which is where the financial district is and it involved us driving the underwater tunnel to cross the River Hangzhou. We comeback to the surface not far from our next stop, The Oriental Pearl Tower in the Lujiazui financial district.
The Oriental Pearl Tower is actually a TV tower, built in 1994 and was the tallest structure in China from 1994–2007 before being surpassed by the nearby Shanghai World Financial Center.
The Pearl tower stands at 468m tall and features 11 spheres, big and small. The two largest spheres, along the length of the tower, have diameters of 50m.
There are fifteen observatory levels with the highest, called the Space Module, at 350m. The lower Sightseeing Floor is at 263 m. There is a revolving restaurant at 267 m.
The project also contains exhibition facilities, restaurants and a shopping mall and there's also a 20-room hotel called the Space Hotel between the two large spheres.

We take the lift up to the lower Sightseeing Floor and as we venture out onto the deck the whole of Shanghai is our oyster. We walked around and around the 360 degree floor a few times taking in the breathtaking views which were pretty good considering its a cloudy day.
From here we can see the 492m tall Shanghai World Financial Center and the 422m tall Jin Mao tower side by side.

The Shanghai World Financial Center is often referred to as the Bottle opener due to its design and its the 3rd tallest building in the world. It is a mixed use skyscraper which consists of offices, hotels, conference rooms, observation decks, and shopping malls on the ground floors. Park Hyatt Shanghai is the hotel component containing 174 rooms and suites. Occupying the 79th to the 93rd floors, it is the highest hotel in the world, surpassing the Grand Hyatt Shanghai on the 53rd to 87th floors of the neighboring Jin Mao Tower.
The Jin Mao Tower is no slouch at being the 12th tallest building in the world and it also consists of offices, hotel and shops.

All around us theres high rise buildings each with their own design and character and as we look back towards where our hotel is we can just about make it out in the distance.
Diana takes us down one level and we are now faced with a 360 glass walkway in which people are walking around on and having fun by jumping up and down on it!
It takes a bit of bottle to get out onto the glass walkway and I got myself out eventually and built my confidence up a wee bit for photos. Jills not even attempting it and stands well back with some other people who are not fancying it one bit. Its quite hairy looking down towards the ground and its best not to look down and after a few minutes I have had enough as bad thoughts of breaking glass start to creep into my mind.

We take the lift back down to the bottom floor where we had a short walk around the Shanghai history museum which explained a lot about the emergence of Shanghai and the role the French and the British had in making Shanghai what it is today.

International attention to Shanghai grew in the 19th century due to its economic and trade potential at the Yangtze River. During the First Opium War (1839–1842), British forces temporarily held the city. The war ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, opening the treaty ports, Shanghai included, for international trade. Treaties were signed and that signalled the start of the foreign concessions. In 1854, the Shanghai Municipal Council was created to manage the foreign settlements. Over the next 100 years a few wars and an influx of Jews, Russians, French and many other nationalities added to the ever growing problem of who had control of what. Its finally sorted out when the birth and rise of the Peoples Republic of China and the Communist movement in 1949 basically took full control of Shanghai although nothing really changed commercially.

There's so much historical information throughout this museum that it would take a full day to understand and digest it all. In a nutshell it would be safe to say that Shanghai was one of the first diverse and cosmopolitan cities in the world and at an early age hence the size of the place along with the popularity with trade, finance and commerce.

Ok, where we heading next? Lunch and then we are off to the Old city in the Chenghuang miao area.
The Chenghuang Miao or Old City God Temple as its sometimes called forms the core of the old city of Shanghai and refers to the traditional district of commerce in the city and its surrounded by temples. There are over a hundred stores and shops in this area, and most of these store buildings are nearly a century old and as we walk around its easy to spot why its such a popular area.
The Old City God Temple connects to the Yuyuan Garden which is where we're heading for but firstly we must try and navigate through the extremely busy Chenghuang Miao streets. Its very nice here as we pass under the Temples and Paifangs, which are pagoda like structures, and the colours of the buildings are a mass of pinks and yellows due to the recent new year celebrations. We are stuck in a human jam for around twenty minutes shuffling our way towards th Zig Zag Bridge that crosses the small lake.
We crossed the overcrowded Nine Zig Zag bridge, past the Mid Lake Pavillion and finally arrived at the gates to the Yuyuan Gardens much to our relief as its very quiet within the gardens.

Yuyuan Garden is a famous classical garden which was started and finished in 1577 by a government officer of the Ming Dynasty named Pan Yunduan. Yu in Chinese means pleasing and satisfying, and this garden was specially built for Pan's parents as a place for them to enjoy a tranquil and happy time in their old age.

In the 400 years of its existence, Yuyuan Garden had undergone many changes. During the late Ming Dynasty, it became very dilapidated with the decline of Pan's family. In 1760, some rich merchants bought Yuyuan Garden and spent more than 20 years reconstructing the buildings. During the Opium War of the 19th century, Yuyuan Garden was severely damaged. The Yuyuan Garden we see today is the result of a five year restoration project which began in 1956. The garden was open to the public in September, 1961.

Yuyuan Garden occupies an area of about five acres in which there are six main scenic areas such as Sansui Hall, Wanhua Chamber, Dianchun Hall, Huijing Hall, Yuhua Hall and the Inner Garden.
We entered and walked through the Sansui Hall which was used to entertain guests and it is the largest and most commodious structure in the garden.
As we wandered the area of Yule Pavilion and Wanhua Chamber, we found pavilions, corridors, streams, courtyards as well as many other natural features. We walked through to The Dianchun Hall area passing the Double Lane Corridor which was weird and wonderful.
Everywhere we looked there was sheer beauty and we're captivated by the Dragon walls which top the walls and end with a dragons mouth above doorways.
If you look at the photos descriptions you'll note that I've done my best to name each individual structure and area and I should really let the photos speak for themselves.
The highlight for us personally was the Jade Water Corridor and surrounding gardens as its pristine and so quiet you can hear the insects and birds chirping away.
We pass by the impressive Yuhua Hall, inner gardens and into the Big stage Area before exiting. Wow, a hour passed so quick and we could've stayed longer but Diana insists we get moving as we do not want to get caught in Shanghai rush hour!

We're now cutting through a back lane into the busy street where our cab is magically waiting for us and we have a short visit to a Silk worm factory before heading home.
We were shown into a building not far from our hotel where they make silk from silkworms. They showed us the life cycle of a silk worm and right through the whole process of extracting silk, stretching it, cleaning and then weaving it into blankets and cloths. It was a twenty minute education on how silk is traditonally made and we found it interesting and glad that it was a short visit as we're dead on our feet and just needing home now.
There was no pressure to buy anything in the silk shop as we left which was a relief as sometimes you feel obliged to buy something after getting shown such things and they can badger you into buying stuff sometimes. Diana drops us off at the hotel and bids us goodbye and instructs us to be ready in a couple of days time at said time. We have the next two days to ourselves which is great as we will visit The Bund and the famous Nanjing Street and hopefully get a night view of the skyline of Shanghai, weather permitting.

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Photos

Shanghai National Museum
shaped like a dumpling steamer!

View from Pearl tower - Shanghai
looking over Huangpu River - Puidong

Comments

[fred]

Number one son write good story
I am rooted in the past, I see S'hai as a city of dark shadows, mystery, intrigue and murder ,starring Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Laurie and Humphry Bogart, it's narrow dimly lit streets full of Chinese men with pigtails with rickshaws just about every where, please tell me there is an old quarter that still exists. Even at our age I would just have to buy some china and ship it home you must be tempted I'm sure. We both feel tired on your behalf, for keeping at it. Love from us both.