My Chinese-language lesson classmate, fellow Youth Ambassador and all round awesome friend Naomi has recently got a dream job to return to East Timor to be with her dream man and so her departure from China was imminent. Shanghai was on her list of places to see and so she called me up and said "Hey, Shacks, you wanna go to Shangers with me?"."Dui dui dui!" I replied (which I don't think really needs translating).
And after the customary ticket hassles we were on our way to live it up in the international business capital of China. We flew out from the Airport's new Terminal 3 though I didn't know this until I was trying to check-in at Terminal 2 and the lady smiled and said, "Oh no, you want Terminal 3. You want Air China." Looking pointedly at the Air China symbol on the counter, on her tag and at the large text saying "Air China" above her head, I knew better than to say anything and just asked how to get to T3.
The free shuttle bus between terminals, though convenient, is obviously driven by a Laotian because they were in no rush to go anywhere fast, and Nai and I dashed to the right counter in the shiny new building so be told the check-in had closed. She told us we can go to to the ticket counter and take the next flight. I asked how late we were and she said check-in closed an hour before departure. I looked at the clock: we were 4 minutes late.
Despite my sadness that my perfect flight attendance record had been shattered (it would have to be Beijing that did it) we caught the next flight which left so soon that we had to leg it to the boarding gate. The flight gave us the chance to read about Shanghai and plan the attractions we wanted to see. We were mesmerised (and horrified) to experience a new feature on Air China's fleet: the Wheel-Cam. Yes indeed, they have a little camera on the landing gear of the plane so that on the cabin screen you can first watch the earth fall away from under you at take-off, then the earth come hurtling back toward you when landing. Comforting.
We managed to find our way from the airport to our little hostel near the centre of town via the notoriously bad maps of the Lonely Planet, and booked into what turned out to be a windowless creepy sort of room. Two guys were moving out as we were moving in and Nai asked why they were switching rooms and the man hesitated. "Oh, no reason," he said a little too casually, "we were here a day early and our other room is now available." Hmmmm, we thought, but as no other room was available we simply headed out to explore Shanghai.
The Shanghai Hikers Youth Hostel is near the centre of town, one street West of the Bund so that was our first stop. In the 1930s Shanghai became the most important port in Asia for tea, silk, porcelain and of course opium. The world's largest trading and banking firms set up house along the Bund, the major river running through the city, and the architecture still reflects these foreign influences and lends an interesting nuance to the city. The Bund walk was packed with tourists taking the same photos and pushy vendors selling the same gizmos but it was a great view across the river and at the old colonial buildings built along the waterfront.Of note was the ubiquitous Chairman Mao statue that was a little more camp than usual.
We walked all the way down to visit the Yuyuan Bizarre (yes I spelt that wrong to more accurately describe it). The "old-styled" buildings of the "antique" and souvenir shopping mall was kitsch but cute, and clearly Haagen-Daaz, KFC and Starbucks add a particular authenticity to the place because they were (as always) packed with people not adventurous enough to try something new.And if I thought there were lots of tourists at the Bund, it had nothing on this place! Chinese, American, French, and German tour groups all jostled for space and in matching jackets we even spotted the Canadian Band Salute tour group ("This one time, at band camp, we went to Beijing!"). Shanghai is famous for it's food (like everywhere in China) but particularly it's variety of steamed dumplings - Xiao Long Bao. In Yuyuan we were told of the famous Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant and spotted it a mile away because that's how long the queue was. It was a little too meaty for the on-again-off-again-vegetarian in Nai so I gobbled them all up, and we snacked our way around the city from that moment onwards. We wandered into the Yuyuan Gardens which was a respite from the hoards and wandered through the pagodas, rockeries and corridors.
From there we explored back streets and dead-ends until we headed back to the Bund, and found a beer launch at The Bund Brewery that (for the price of a name card) let you in for a free pint. An excellent start. We were heading to the Peace Hotel Bar, which was famous for it's live Jazz in the evenings which has been a tradition since the 1940s and still had two members of the first all-Chinese Jazz band, but our information was obviously out-of-date and we found the Peace Hotel (yes, not just the bar, the hotel!) shut down and boarded up. Nai's friend had suggested Bar Rouge for the view so we ended up there, paying RMB80 for a weak cocktail, sitting in red velvet cubes in the semi-darkness. But, yes, the view across the river was quite stunning, though the jury was out on whether it was RMB80 worth of view.
That night we found out why the two men had moved out: that dark windowless, airless room was an oven for nightmares. I'm not convinced that during our first night we weren't all oxygen deprived and suffered a little carbon dioxide poisoning. Strange, twisty, and disturbing dreams were had by all in the room, and though I realised there was a small extraction fan which I turned on during the remaining nights, the bad dreams didn't stop. There was some serious bad vibe-age in that room though it's interesting how quickly you both recover from and get used to waking up sweating and perturbed.
Nothing was going to stop us though, and on our second day we headed out to XinTianDi, a very swanky business and entertainment complex where were told to find the French bakery "Paul" for divine baked goods. Too trendy to be interesting beyond Paul's amazing chocolate croissant, we left the complex and headed to the French Concession for a walk around. In the 1840s, the British, French, American and Japanese established concessions (territories) after China lost the first Opium War and the French Concession was a great mix of traditional residential buildings, trendy modern shopping and Art Deco blocks.
Walking through more backstreets, we went in search of something I really wanted to see: the Propaganda Poster Art Centre. The first sign we were going to have a long search ahead of us was the fact it wasn't even marked on the LP map. The second was the description of how to get there: "a small gallery in the bowels of a residential block... once you find the main entrance a guard will point you the way." We wandered for ages, going North, South, East and West of the general vicinity to no avail. To our surprise, the Shanghainese were both helpful and knowledgeable when asked for directions, something Beijingren are not! People did their best to help us but all admitted that they didn't know exactly where it was we wanted to go. I guess a propaganda gallery isn't a top local attraction.
But! We did manage to stumble on the Holy Grail: H&M. It was Naomi's mission to get clothes for East Timor and despite my insistence that I didn't need anything, we spent two glorious hours there and tried on over a dozen items each. It was a feeding frenzy of trying, comparing and buying and we stumbled out of the shop a little dizzy but fully sated.
No propaganda, but we did find man age to find the bizarre China Sex Culture Museum in the PuDong New Area on the other side of the Bund near the famous Oriental Pearl Tower. The Museum should have had the description "a small gallery in the bowels of the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel entrance... you'll never know it's down there until you ask someone to point you the way." Luckily, we managed to find the exhi bition of copulating statues, sex tools to keep widows chaste, and (my favourite) a bamboo figure "used for delivering the signal for lovemaking in by Shao nationality, Taiwan. When the husband sees the penis of the figure is in erections, it means the wife wants to make coitus; if the penis is in down position, then not." I'm so putting that on my wedding gift register.
Taking the epilepsy-inducing, mind warping Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, Nai found us a fantastic little tapas bar Azul where we splashed out on a nice bottle of wine and had a very romantic little tête-a-tête (sorry Luis!). Despite our exhaustion, we decided to have just one drink at The Cotton Club, having heard great things about it, and were so glad we did. The house jazz band were amazing, better than anything I've heard in Beijing, and poor Nai mourned the lack of live music in East Timor. And the lack of nightlife. And vegetarian food. And the fact that if you look after your pet dog too well, your neighbours will steal it and eat it. This piece of information knocked me for six, and my first though of course was that Die go wouldn't last 1.095 seconds. 
The next day we went to the DuoLun Ro ad Cultural Street, once home to some of China's most famous writers and lined with marvellous old buildings. I bought a book on 'Moscow, St Petersberg and the Golden Ring' for a whole ￥40 (I'm already ecstatic about my Trans-Siberian trip) and we settled in at the gorgeous Old Film Cafe, lined with old posters and photos of film beauties. A small consolation to not finding the propaganda posters, there was a shop displaying the private collection of over 10,000 Mao badges, and a second-hand store selling the most fabulous Mao-era posters, records, books and genuine antiques (or you'd hope they were genuine for the price!).
That night we tried to be a little more social and sat at the Hostel bar for awhile. But after speaking to a teacher who'd been living in a shared hostel room for over a year (crazy!) and a rotund vegan who lectured us on the morality and intricacies of life vs. health insurance, we decided socialising was over-rated and went to bed.
Our final day was spent in Qibao, an ancient canal town which has been tourist-ified to within an inch of it's peeling paint. We wanted to visit other less-touristy canal towns but a late start, an out-of-date guidebook and a closed down bus station left us no choice but to go to the closest option. Well, like all good tourist spots the shopping was good and the food was great, so we strolled around and took a short boat ride to ease Naomi's weary bones as I'd managed to break her feet with all the rushing around.
With little to do until our flight home, we had a foot massage where karma bit me in the bum and the man broke MY foot with his machinations, and somehow time slipped away and suddenly we were late for our flight. We caught it by the skin of out teeth this time though, thanks to Naomi's optimism forcing me to keep going. And bless Air China, no deed goes unpunished, so we were relegated to the back of the plane, grudgingly given a cold sandwich and our baggage was withheld until the very end (that might not be strictly true, but just cause you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out of get you. Especially in China).
Naomi has now left us and is sorely missed. I owe her a debt for dragging my sorry carcass out of my chair and getting me to Shangahi, and can only hope the sympathy pain in my foot that lasted four days was a small consolation for breaking hers by dragging her at break neck speed around the city! I miss you Naomi, see you in East Timor!
And after the customary ticket hassles we were on our way to live it up in the international business capital of China. We flew out from the Airport's new Terminal 3 though I didn't know this until I was trying to check-in at Terminal 2 and the lady smiled and said, "Oh no, you want Terminal 3. You want Air China." Looking pointedly at the Air China symbol on the counter, on her tag and at the large text saying "Air China" above her head, I knew better than to say anything and just asked how to get to T3.
The free shuttle bus between terminals, though convenient, is obviously driven by a Laotian because they were in no rush to go anywhere fast, and Nai and I dashed to the right counter in the shiny new building so be told the check-in had closed. She told us we can go to to the ticket counter and take the next flight. I asked how late we were and she said check-in closed an hour before departure. I looked at the clock: we were 4 minutes late.
Despite my sadness that my perfect flight attendance record had been shattered (it would have to be Beijing that did it) we caught the next flight which left so soon that we had to leg it to the boarding gate. The flight gave us the chance to read about Shanghai and plan the attractions we wanted to see. We were mesmerised (and horrified) to experience a new feature on Air China's fleet: the Wheel-Cam. Yes indeed, they have a little camera on the landing gear of the plane so that on the cabin screen you can first watch the earth fall away from under you at take-off, then the earth come hurtling back toward you when landing. Comforting.We managed to find our way from the airport to our little hostel near the centre of town via the notoriously bad maps of the Lonely Planet, and booked into what turned out to be a windowless creepy sort of room. Two guys were moving out as we were moving in and Nai asked why they were switching rooms and the man hesitated. "Oh, no reason," he said a little too casually, "we were here a day early and our other room is now available." Hmmmm, we thought, but as no other room was available we simply headed out to explore Shanghai.
The Shanghai Hikers Youth Hostel is near the centre of town, one street West of the Bund so that was our first stop. In the 1930s Shanghai became the most important port in Asia for tea, silk, porcelain and of course opium. The world's largest trading and banking firms set up house along the Bund, the major river running through the city, and the architecture still reflects these foreign influences and lends an interesting nuance to the city. The Bund walk was packed with tourists taking the same photos and pushy vendors selling the same gizmos but it was a great view across the river and at the old colonial buildings built along the waterfront.Of note was the ubiquitous Chairman Mao statue that was a little more camp than usual.We walked all the way down to visit the Yuyuan Bizarre (yes I spelt that wrong to more accurately describe it). The "old-styled" buildings of the "antique" and souvenir shopping mall was kitsch but cute, and clearly Haagen-Daaz, KFC and Starbucks add a particular authenticity to the place because they were (as always) packed with people not adventurous enough to try something new.And if I thought there were lots of tourists at the Bund, it had nothing on this place! Chinese, American, French, and German tour groups all jostled for space and in matching jackets we even spotted the Canadian Band Salute tour group ("This one time, at band camp, we went to Beijing!"). Shanghai is famous for it's food (like everywhere in China) but particularly it's variety of steamed dumplings - Xiao Long Bao. In Yuyuan we were told of the famous Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant and spotted it a mile away because that's how long the queue was. It was a little too meaty for the on-again-off-again-vegetarian in Nai so I gobbled them all up, and we snacked our way around the city from that moment onwards. We wandered into the Yuyuan Gardens which was a respite from the hoards and wandered through the pagodas, rockeries and corridors.
From there we explored back streets and dead-ends until we headed back to the Bund, and found a beer launch at The Bund Brewery that (for the price of a name card) let you in for a free pint. An excellent start. We were heading to the Peace Hotel Bar, which was famous for it's live Jazz in the evenings which has been a tradition since the 1940s and still had two members of the first all-Chinese Jazz band, but our information was obviously out-of-date and we found the Peace Hotel (yes, not just the bar, the hotel!) shut down and boarded up. Nai's friend had suggested Bar Rouge for the view so we ended up there, paying RMB80 for a weak cocktail, sitting in red velvet cubes in the semi-darkness. But, yes, the view across the river was quite stunning, though the jury was out on whether it was RMB80 worth of view.That night we found out why the two men had moved out: that dark windowless, airless room was an oven for nightmares. I'm not convinced that during our first night we weren't all oxygen deprived and suffered a little carbon dioxide poisoning. Strange, twisty, and disturbing dreams were had by all in the room, and though I realised there was a small extraction fan which I turned on during the remaining nights, the bad dreams didn't stop. There was some serious bad vibe-age in that room though it's interesting how quickly you both recover from and get used to waking up sweating and perturbed.
Nothing was going to stop us though, and on our second day we headed out to XinTianDi, a very swanky business and entertainment complex where were told to find the French bakery "Paul" for divine baked goods. Too trendy to be interesting beyond Paul's amazing chocolate croissant, we left the complex and headed to the French Concession for a walk around. In the 1840s, the British, French, American and Japanese established concessions (territories) after China lost the first Opium War and the French Concession was a great mix of traditional residential buildings, trendy modern shopping and Art Deco blocks.
Walking through more backstreets, we went in search of something I really wanted to see: the Propaganda Poster Art Centre. The first sign we were going to have a long search ahead of us was the fact it wasn't even marked on the LP map. The second was the description of how to get there: "a small gallery in the bowels of a residential block... once you find the main entrance
But! We did manage to stumble on the Holy Grail: H&M. It was Naomi's mission to get clothes for East Timor and despite my insistence that I didn't need anything, we spent two glorious hours there and tried on over a dozen items each. It was a feeding frenzy of trying, comparing and buying and we stumbled out of the shop a little dizzy but fully sated.
Taking the epilepsy-inducing, mind warping Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, Nai found us a fantastic little tapas bar Azul where we splashed out on a nice bottle of wine and had a very romantic little tête-a-tête (sorry Luis!). Despite our exhaustion, we decided to have just one drink at The Cotton Club, having heard great things about it, and were so glad we did. The house jazz band were amazing, better than anything I've heard in Beijing, and poor Nai mourned the lack of live music in East Timor. And the lack of nightlife. And vegetarian food. And the fact that if you look after your pet dog too well, your neighbours will steal it and eat it. This piece of information knocked me for six, and my first though of course was that Die
With little to do until our flight home, we had a foot massage where karma bit me in the bum and the man broke MY foot with his machinations, and somehow time slipped away and suddenly we were late for our flight. We caught it by the skin of out teeth this time though, thanks to Naomi's optimism forcing me to keep going. And bless Air China, no deed goes unpunished, so we were relegated to the back of
Naomi has now left us and is sorely missed. I owe her a debt for dragging my sorry carcass out of my chair and getting me to Shangahi, and can only hope the sympathy pain in my foot that lasted four days was a small consolation for breaking hers by dragging her at break neck speed around the city! I miss you Naomi, see you in East Timor!
