Bright lights of Shanghai and our summary of China

  Shanghai, Shanghai, China
Friday, May 9, 2008

Oriental Pearl at night

Oooh we like Shanghai.  Our first impression was some rare integrated transport (straight from bus to metro) and the metro is comprehensive with long, long trains.  Then we arrived at the hostel.  It's a little way from the metro but it's amazing.  We always stay in a room rather than dorms but our room is like a boutique hotel complete with jacuzzi shower, light controls from the bedside panel, a fridge, microwave and great bed.  With a decent location it would be 200 Pounds in London and we paid 200Y, and there's 14Y to a Pound!  It also has the added attraction of 6 one month-old kittens - 3 ginger, 1 white, 1 grey and 1 mottled.  So cute!  We're thinking of slipping a couple in our bags.

Shanghai is much more cosmopolitan than anywhere else we've been in China (it's more like a super-sized Hong Kong) and it's nice to see people wearing smart clothes, with strange hair-styles and walking around with a bit of a swagger, they don't spit or stare much either.  So different from Beijing.  We both said, if there was one place we could live in in China then Shanghai would be it.

We explored the riverside in the rain last night, it's great as its all lit up with the ever popular neon.  We had a look at the iconic Oriental Pearl television tower - it's so appalling ugly that it's actually beautiful.  It's like a massive TV aerial on a tripod with enormous purple/red spaceships embedded in it.  Has to be seen to be believed.  We then had a great Thai meal and a great night's sleep.

Happy face

Today we visited the must-see Shanghai museum.  Normally have to admit museums are a little dull but we were very impressed with the age of some of the relics displayed: they had bronze urns and vessels from >1,700 BC and pottery and ceramics from 4,000 BC!  Now that's pretty special and they were quite ornate even back then.  So that's why we call our pottery "china" - obvious but I bet like us, most of you never made the connection.  There was also rather a lot of calligraphy, paintings and Buddist statues etc to have a nose through.  After this we explored the Bund and Nanjing Road - the historic trading buildings and district from back in the day when Shanghai was the Chinese trading post with the outside world.  There is even the Noble House building from James Clavell's classic Tai-pan and Noble House books that we've been reading.  We've met a few students wanting to practice their English (and try to rip us off in expensive tea houses) but one said that if China is a tree then Xi'an is like the roots (it was the ancient capital), Beijing the trunk and Shanghai the pretty leaves on the branches.  It kind of makes sense in a way.

Acrobats climbing chairs

This evening we went to a fabulous acrobatics show.  I was a bit reticent about going but it was amazing.  There were girls flying all over the place; people contorting themselves into all kinds of crazy shapes; men jumping through hoops, sometimes on stilts; couples flying round the stage hanging onto silk from the ceiling; jugglers; magicians; knife throwing; a girl flipping a brolly round and round and over and over with just her feet whilst laying on her back and much more.  Truly amazing.  A definite must-see if you ever come to Shanghai or if they come to the UK.

Bund Sight-seeing Tunnel 2

Packing in our days, we tried to go to the Propaganda Poster museum but couldn't find it, so we went to the Urban Planning exhibition.  Firstly it is pleasing to see there is a plan!  Not obvious from many cities.  And "the master plan" is quite impressive but we did get a bit bored - there are 4 floors worth of specifics.  Then we went to a nice garden and bazaar (both mobbed) and then the Bund sight-seeing tunnel.  Basically a passage under the river but in the Chinese way they have built a little mono-rail with crazy neon lights, music etc - must be a boon for epileptics anywhere.  Finally we went up the Oriental Pearl at dusk to see the city by day and night.  Quite impressive but they didn't seem to think about tourism when it was built so the queuing wasn't very clever.

Finally given the choice between an hour's ride in a taxi or an 8 minute ride on a Maglev train to get to the airport, we chose the latter.  Good practice for Japan as well.  It was great.  For the first 2 minutes the train just accelerates steadily before reaching its top speed of 430 kph - that's 267 mph!  You go so fast that cars on the free-way appear to be going backwards.  Top stuff and a nice way to leave China.


Top 10 things the Chinese love:

1> Spitting.  Imagine the worst throaty "Hooooik!" and spit you can, and you've got it.  Now imagine that several times a day and the pavements littered with little globules of spittle.  They all do it.  A woman this week even did it in the restaurant while we were having lunch and on the bus to Shanghai.
2> Squatting.  Either just for a nice rest or for answering the call of nature, they loooove to squat.  We've seen people queue for a squat loo rather than use a Western one (which actually suits us fine thank you very much!) 
3> Noise.  From shouting down their mobile phones (do they think they are plastic cups joined by string?) to megaphones at tourist attractions and in shops, the Chinese love NOISE.  The most important feature on any vehicle is its hooter.
4> Smoking.  This may have something to do with the toilets (blotting out the smell) but all men seem to smoke. Someone even had the cheek to smoke in the toilets in the plane from Sydney.  Hard to believe we've only had a smoking ban for a year in blighty but you soon notice the difference.
5> Exotic food.  I've covered that in the Hangzhou entry
6> Neon.  Ghastly neon lights up all chinese cities at night.  The karaoke bars should be commended for going the extra mile.  The only exception is the delightful, tasteful lighting in Lijiang which was beautiful at night.
7> Littering.  Even on the Great Wall and the Yangtze and outside their own homes they litter with gay abandon.  The lack of respect for the environment is incredible.
8> Staring.  We have felt like film stars at times but generally it's rather tiresome.  Some good techniques to counter it are to say Ni Hao (hello), wink or wave patronisingly at them.  Kids are generally scared of us but most adults are pleased to see us.
9> Telly.  Every bus, train, platform etc we've been on has a telly and VCD player.  Even amongst the paddy fields in Yangshuo we found farmers sitting in a dilapidated farm house watching some (badly acted) soap-opera.
10> Pushing/shoving.  Patience is not a familiar virtue out here.  Of course we Brits would like to see queuing in the Olympics but they take the biscuit.  Pause for a second and someone will jump in.  Or don't pause at all, they seem to think because we're foreign they can just push round or jump in ahead.  Well, no, you can't actually and I've sent half a dozen people to the back of the queue in disgrace.  A plane landing is good: we've had people standing up, digging into the over-head lockers before the plane has left the runway.  It's rather telling that there's no word in Mandarin for "excuse me".

And so what to make of China?

The country itself is certainly very interesting with absolutely loads to see and far more varied than, say, Australia.  Everywhere you go seems to be a UNESCO world heritage site but sadly the chances of seeing this site by yourself or in any peace are slim as everywhere is absolutely mobbed by Chinese tour groups with their flags and megaphones.  It really is hard to convey how many people there are here - every tiny dot on the map has a million people living there - and mostly in high rises with rows and rows and rows being built alongside.  It's clear that China has a big pollution problem: despite hot and sunny weather we only saw blue skies once or twice and I hate to think what that is doing to people.  Still we've enjoyed people's hospitality and enterprising spirit and learning Mandarin has been fun and very useful at times.

All told, it's a great place to visit... although not for months on end perhaps. We saw a sign in Chengdu that quoted Gandhi: "A great country is judged by the way it treats its animals".  Well by that measure alone, China has a lot of work to do before it is great.

Finally and I know I've mentioned this topic already but...they may claim to have 5,000 years of continuous civilisation (and the dust on the relics in Beijing to prove it!) but you'd think in that time they'd have sorted out their loos wouldn't you?  They were frequently utterly disgusting and shameful, to the extent that we very nearly bought nose plugs that they were curiously selling for any budding synchronised swimmers out there.  The French (one of the few Western European countries with plenty of squats in the 21st century) must be in their element though, literally like pigs in muck!  And why no doors on some of the cubicles?  We met someone who said she even had her photo taken whilst err..."making a deposit" (if you'll excuse my rudeness).

And so from one latrine extreme to another: onwards to Japan!