Pudong Skyline
Hobbes in the consumer frenzy of Nanjing Dong Lu
Shanghai certainly has the hustle and bustle of an international city, people elbowing and shoving their way onto the subway, pushing past you on the street and forming human traffic jams on the footpaths. This was particularly on Christmas Eve, when the main shopping street, Nanjing Dong Lu, became a virtual river of people, if you got caught on the wrong side you got carried along for a while before you could escape! It was reminicent of Le Loi Street a year ago in Saigon, again showing that you don't need a whole lot of Christmas spirit to celebrate at that time of year, just a lot of consumer spirit...
Shanghai's funky artist run spaces
As in all good big cities much time was spent in museums, galleries and exhibitions. The Urban Planning Exhibition has a very impressive (for the engineer anyways) scale model of the city, but was obviously put together with too much input from town planners (sorry Dad) as it was heavy on info and light on uderstanding :) Though the photos of the Pudong circa 1994 (as a marshland) and 2004 (as a high rise jungle) was quite astounding and really gave you an appreciation of what has been achieved here. Also notable was the plan to build a deep water port on an island out at sea to be connected to the mainland with a 32km bridge - they don't do things by halves in the 'new' China!
Shanghai's tallest building... for the moment
Shopping centre action
The Shanghai Museum is very big (perhaps too big?) and must compete with Xian's for the best in China. Unfortunately, after almost 3 months in China we had seen so many porcelin vases, seals and bronze drinking vessles that we probably didn't give it the time it deserved. Although it was good to see the exhibition on minority cultures, particularly as most of our time in China had been spent in the areas where these minorities live (Tibetan, Mongol, Kazak, Zhuang among others).
Old Shanghai still exists
The most surprising and enjoyable were the warehouse art galleries, which really hammered home the fact that Shanghai is like nowhere else in China. Lots of funky studios with artists working, cigarette half hanging out of their mouths, Lou Reed playing in the background and Warhol-esque representations of Mao.
Romance down on the riverbank
As Shanghai was our home for Christmas Day, it was our first cold, if not quite white, Christmas. It actually turned out to be a really fun day despite the cold and the fact that we were sharing a dorm room with 10 others (most of whom seemed to have come to Shanghai to sleep?). First we took the freaky Bund Sightseeing Tunnel (the exact purpose of which we couldn't quite work out - part Ghost Train ride, part psychedelic freak out, part monorail, part who knows what??) to the Pudong side of the city. In addition to getting us across the river, it gave us access to the Chinese Sex Culture exhibition which was surprisngly graphic - particularly for China (ask Hobbes for a private viewing of a photo of one of the bronze sculptures).
Pudong wasn't quite as jam packed with buildings as expected, but there certainly are some big ones and the big hole in the ground for the biggest of the lot is just that - BIG. As a treat for our first winter Christmas brunch consisted of ice cream with a Bund View, perhaps belying our southern hemisphere roots?
Bund tunnel wierdness
For dinner we went to 'M on the Bund' (Aussie chef!) for a belated birthday dinner for Aimes. While not competing with the meat consumption we had on her actual birthday, it was without doubt the nicest meal we have had in the past 4 months and are likely to have in the next couple. Fortunately we were able to pull together sufficiently fancy outfits from our backpacks that we weren't turned away at the door :)
The view from 'M on the Bund'
We spent our final day walking around the old French Concession, in an attempt to find the building where the Shanghai branch of Aimes' grandmother's childrens' boutique, 'Little Shirley', once existed. After managing to find the street we thought we might be in luck, however when we arrived at the right number we found several semi-demolished buildings making way for yet another Shanghainese skyscraper. Guess we were just too late...
Why say no to progress? Perhaps what was left of Aimes' grandmother's shop?
The walking didn't last for too long however as the temperature was rapidly dropping, requiring some urgent coffees and a retreat to the subway. At least it gave us a taste of what to expect in Beijing... What we saw of the French Concession was really nice, the tree lined steets and low-rise buildings being a complete contrast from the Pudong Business area, although how it long this will survive would seem to be questionable.
Nanjing Dong Lu at night
As alluded too above there was one final train trip and one more night in freezing Beijing before we flew out for Singapore en route to India. After our luxurious soft sleeper train trip (the rooms had doors and the toilet actually flushed!) we made a quick dash for the nearest hostel where we spent most of the day due to the fact that temperature was about zero at best. A quick excursion was made to the post office, the food court where we ate our first meal in China and on Hobbes' insistence to Tianamen Square to "see what it looks like in the cold". The answer being bleak, the moat around the Forbidden City was frozen and just about the only other people out were soldiers.
A cold Tianamen Square
So that was it for China, after almost 3 months and after travelling over 14,000km on trains and buses we finally completed our near circumnavigation of the most populous country in the world. There were so many amazing experiences and the sheer vastness of the varied cultures and landscapes far exceeded even our most extravagant expectations.
Some final street food action
While there will be many things we will not be sorry to see the back of (primarily the spitting and coughing and toilets) there will be so many more that we will. Fresh bao and dumplings for breakfast, men in suits no matter what their job (especially the painters), the massive sights, the range of landscapes, and the fact that people will make the effort to try and understand your confused looks and pointing. As always, as soon as we left we started thinking of all the places we didn't make it too, Lhasa, Golmud, Inner Mongolia, Haerbin, Hainan, Hangzhou etc etc, but 3 months is enough for now.
Our dodgy map of our trip so far
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