No Call Number: Shanghai

The Bund

We spent a lot of time in transit to get here. First we took the KTX to Seoul, then the shuttle to Incheon airport, then a flight to Shanghai, a maglev from the airport to the city, and a cab to our hotel. The maglev is worth mentioning. It goes 440 km per hour and banks to turn, and I found it a slightly terrifying experience. Bobby thought it was cool.

When we finally got here, we headed for The Bund, which is a picturesque and crowded, area by the river. One side of the river is lined with old European buildings, and the other sports flashy, space age buildings. It was well worth the crowds. There is a lot of history on the Bund, which was where the British set up shop after the Opium Wars. The venerable buildings included a British consulate built in the mid 1800's, an old customs house, and a fusty old club where “Chinese and dogs” were not allowed. It's a wonder that the Chinese let these symbols of British imperialism stand, but they are beautiful now (and all fly Chinese flags). There is a steady flow of barges heading through the canal. It is almost like watching cars on the highway. On the other side of the river, after nightfall, there are twinkling buildings, buildings with candy colors, and two with video shows on their sides. We had a drink at an old signal house, where we sat on the roof and watched the city light up (well worth the overpriced drinks).

We then squeezed into the ferry with tons of Chinese and headed to the other side of the river. The light show intensified: all of the trees lining the boulevard had green or blue lights on them, and some had white “icicles” hanging from them. It sounds garish, but it was tastefully done, probably for the Expo. We went to the observation deck of the World Financial Center, which is the highest observation deck in the world (or was, they weren't very clear). It was 492meters up, and there was a section in the middle with a glass floor so you can see just how high up you are. Bobby loves these things, and we go to one at every city we visit.

On the third floor, we found a dumpling restaurant. This is exactly what I wanted. I have been reading The Last Chinese Chef, and I was very eager to eat some dumplings. They did not disappoint, though I popped a couple in my mouth before they were adequately cool.

Western influence is very obvious in Shanghai. Aside from the buildings, there are Mc Donalds's, Krispy Kremes, KFC's, and Starbucks, everywhere. We even saw a Hardee's and a Best Buy. We have not yet seen a temple or anything resembling one, but we are in the industrialized area of town. Shanghai has long been a commercial center, and there is not much evidence of old China here.

The Bund

It looks like a space needle

I think this is a customs house

You can kind of see the light display

Yuyuan Gardens and the French Concession

We were going to visit the Expo today, but Bobby pointed out that it's Sunday and there will be less people there tomorrow. We will never be able to avoid crowds; not in Shanghai at this moment. I don't know if it is always this crowded or if people have poured in for the Expo. The event is evident all over Shanghai. There are signs, statues, and topiaries that say Expo 2009, and there are police everywhere. There are bag scanners in the subway, and wherever we go, tons and tons of people.

Anyways, Expo tomorrow. We decided to go to Yuyuan Gardens, which is lovely in the pictures and right in the middle of Old Town. We got there to find a huge crunch of people. “Old Town” doesn't look particularly old, though the traditional architecture is beautiful. It's a cluster of stores that was jam packed with tourists. We found our way to the gardens and paid the entrance fee, which got us away from the overwhelming crunch. The gardens were lovely. There were clusters of pathways, lots of pagodas, pools with koi, and grottoes. The whole thing used to belong to the obviously well heeled Yu family back in the 16^th century. We laughed about what old Yu is thinking now, with his estate packed with gawking commoners and foreigners. Even with all the people, it was peaceful.

We wandered back through the crowds into a temple. It looked like a Korean buddhist temple, but there were no Buddhas. Instead, there were several different structures honoring different gods. China has many gods, most of whom were real people at some point. I was excited to find the temple to the god of literature. There were a lot of people praying, and each of the gods had offerings of dumplings and fruit. Bobby pointed out that at one shrine depicting three gods and a tiger, someone laid out a dumpling for the tiger. There was one temple with three different gods of wealth, and another shrine had a god of war and wealth. It was no surprise that Shanghai, with it's relentless commercialism, has four different gods of wealth in it's town temple. In retrospect, I realize that several of these gods are in Buddhist temples in Korea, though Buddha gets the main slot. Buddhists, I remember, are allowed to worship other gods.

We pushed our way into a three story dumpling shop (“dumplings again? Says Bobby”) but there was absolutely no space. We wandered a bit until a woman lured us into her restaurant, which had dim sum but “expensive” enough so that we didn't have to deal with crowds (our meal was less than $30). We had fabulous dim sum with Chinese businessmen and European tourists.

We noticed some cats outside of the gardens, and more around the city. One was sleeping in the rafters of a temple. Shanghai is a cat city. I bought this kitschy porcelain cat, the kind of tourist fare I normally avoid but I love cats! I have been living in an anti-cat country and was thrilled to see Shanghai's appreciation of their cats. The strays all look very clean and well fed.

We went out again for dinner, but this time to the French Concession. This was a true old town, full of colonial French buildings. One of these was the site of the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, a holy place for Chinese Communists. We found a bunch of restaurants, one of which was German. I told Bobby he could pick where we ate dinner since we had dumplings AGAIN, so this was serendipity for him. We ate on the sidewalk and watched all the tourists trundle by. We noticed a Haagen Dasz, which prompted me to wonder if there's a Haagen Dasz at every tourist spot in the world. I never see them in town, but you go to, say, the Old Church in Amsterdam and there's the Haagen Dasz. We walked among the buildings, which are stunning. I'm glad Shanghai kept them.

Old Town McDonalds

A sea of people

a teahouse

a design on the eaves

one of Yu's halls

grottoes

Shanghai god

Prayer ribbons ??

A magnificent stage

Kitty in the temple

Shanghai Expo ad. That's the mascot

French concession

Shanghai Expo

Meh. I planned this entire trip around the Expo. I read Devil in the White city a few years ago, and it filled my head with dreams of a World's Fair with dizzying displays of tomorrow's technology. We probably should have visited a technology pavilion. Instead, what we encountered were long lines, pushy people, and bad food. There were some interesting pavilions. My favorite was probably The Netherlands, which was a multilevel display of Holland art, old and new. The bottom level was astroturf and model sheep. Canada had a display on sustainability where you could ride a bike and make a trippy cartoon run, complete with psychedelic music. They also managed to grow grass all over the side of their pavilion. Australia had a rotating set of screens that came out of the floor and retreated into the floor, revealing a new sculpture each time. Indonesia had an indoor waterfall. We waited in line the longest to see the USA pavilion, and it was so lousy we didn't even see the whole thing. It was almost entirely in Mandarin, and while every other pavilion displayed some of the country's contributions to art, history, and/or science, the US was a series of videos. The first showed a bunch of people in New York trying to say “welcome” in Mandarin and Kobe Bryant. I was annoyed. Were we trying to say we have no culture? Also, all the other pavilions had some English, but the US didn't? “Hi, we're America! Most of us look ludicrous trying to speak Mandarin, but we do have Kobe Bryant.” Guh.

It was also one of those places that brought out the worst in people. They shoved in line, like pushing me up against the person in front of me would get them in faster.

The entire event was massive, and there were 3 hour lines for some of the pavilions. The UK had a really long line and a neat looking pavilion. It resembled a giant pincushin.

So, World's Fair—I've seen one, I don't really need to see any more.