Shanghai
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
187
219
Trip End
Jun 17, 2009
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Shanghai,
Shanghai,
China
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Last night I slept with three women.
Ok Ok, so one was in the bunk above me and two were in the bunks below and their partners were in the remaining ones, - but it sounded good for a minute didn't it?
A reasonable but fitful night's sleep, notable for the absolute smoothness of the train on the Beijing to Shanghai main line. I awoke not long after the first Chinese who, once up, sat in the pull down seats in the corridor and kept up an incessant, noisy conversation.
I lay in my bunk looking through the window at the misty, passing countryside, a mix of fields, factories and houses. There was an extensive canal system here, similar to the English midlands, which was built to carry food from the countryside to Shanghai. Everywhere old houses were being demolished and a mix of new large houses, apartment blocks and factories were being built. It appeared as though they were intending to rebuild the whole of China, which may be close to what is actually happening.
There was no restaurant car on the train that we saw and everyone had brought their own food, so breakfast was hot tea (from the water boiler at the end of the coach) and some buns.
After 1300 kms (over 800 miles) and thirteen hours, we pulled into Shanghai station. A taxi through the busy, modern streets to our hotel, a quick shower, put some laundry in and then a walk out to explore.
We were staying in a district near the river, away from the city centre, that was very 'local'. The shops and restaurants were definitely local, as we looked for something for lunch and found only dumpling and noodle cafes, eventually we settled for bananas. Walking down the street by the hotel there were several massage parlours, where the pretty young Chinese ladies were waiting to dispense their 'personal' services!
The road streamed with bikes and scooters and these were not the only hazard. Every now and then any Chinese pedestrian would stop and spit across the road into the gutter, including old ladies. The whole place looked as though it was in a state of repair with roads and pavements dug up and derelict buildings scattered everywhere. This really was life on the edges of the big city.
We walked down to the wide 'Huangpu river' and along the river front, with many modern buildings on the far bank and the old colonial buildings, 'The Bund district' on our side. The sky was 'hazy' and masked most of the photos we took and the temperature was around 24 deg., pleasant and a little warmer than Beijing.
A turn into 'Nanjing Road', the main shopping and restaurant area and we could see many modern skyscrapers, some of them of fascinating design. The shops had much western content with famous names and reminded us of the shopping complex of Singapore. There was not much traditional Chinese element here and the prices were at big city levels.
By mid afternoon we were slowing up and whilst the others went off to the museum, we went for a coffee and cake and then returned to the hotel to relax before going out for the evening.
Catching a busy bus, we went to another suburb for a 'Chinese Acrobat Evening', for which Shanghai is renowned. The show was very enthusiastic and the acts ranged through normal acrobatics; plate juggling; hoop diving; balancing on bicycles; balancing on chairs; lantern balancing; diabolo (the big bobbin caught on a string between two sticks) juggling; pole climbing and the finale was a fifteen foot diameter, steel mesh ball, inside which, gradually, five motor bikes whirled around. Amazing.
Back in the hotel we enjoyed a late night beer in the restaurant before bed. We had just dozed off when there was a banging at the door. No, they're not going to go away. It's 11.45pm and we open the door to find our laundry returned. Now I can appreciate industriousness like anyone else, but not at nearly midnight! We are both undressed and Norah takes the laundry and the bill and closes the door to get some money. This starts the banging on the door all over again, until we hand over the money and Mrs Woo (you'll have to be pretty old to appreciate that one!) goes back to her Chinese laundry and leaves us in peace.
Friday October 24th.
Not a very good night's street. The aircon was merely a three speed fan system that blew cold air into the room and the traffic outside kept up its noisy honking all night. We eventually rose at 9.30 and went out to look for breakfast.
One of our outstanding tasks was to find a hotel in the Arab Gulf and we needed to contact the Emirates airline for their hotel list. Not bothering to try to find food near the hotel, we took a taxi to the Emirates office and asked about special packages, as recommended by our travel agent in Oz. "No, no special packages available, just hotel book", came the reply. Was this another one of those 'lost in translation' moments? We took the recommended hotel book for later perusal and walking down the street, found a restaurant for breakfast / lunch. The day was now bright and sunny, around 24 deg and some sign of a blue sky through the 'haze'.
One of the things on my 'to do' list was to find the Shanghai 'Maglev' train, which runs on a principle of electromagnetic suspension and propulsion. A subway ride out to the edge of the city took us to the Maglev station, where the line ran out to the new 'Pudong' airport. I had to have a ride. The modern streamlined train floated out of the station and quickly picked up speed. There was a digital speedometer in the carriage (shades of Concorde) which gradually built up to 431 km per hour or nearly 270 miles per hour. The Maglev holds the Guinness book of records certificate as the world's fastest train, something which surprised me, as I always thought the Japanese 'Bullet train' was faster. It was amazingly smooth and even had banked bends, covering the thirty km to the airport in just eight minutes. What a fantastic ride!
We returned to the city suburbs on the Maglev and after a look round the Maglev museum (sorry Norah, it's a tecchie thing) caught the subway back and then walked to the hotel, arriving in the late afternoon. We were getting used to the Chinese system of queueing (there isn't one, you just push forward with everyone else) and the Chinese road traffic rules (there aren't any, all cars will go through a red light at times and bicycles and motor bikes never stop anyway. No one stops for pedestrians on a crossing, even if the green man is showing - you just walk and be prepared to jump out of the way if necessary!)
In the evening we walked to a restaurant for another banquet, the benefit being that there are so many different Chinese dishes we are mostly having new ones every night. It was also Simon's birthday and we had asked Andy to arrange a cake. Cake duly arrived, nicely decorated with coloured cream and fruit but the inside was a weight watchers nightmare, it was 40% light sponge and 60% cream!
After dinner we walked down to the river and along the Bund side, the old colonial office area with great stone buildings. Boarding a boat we set off downriver, with the illuminated Bund on our left and the ultra modern new financial district on the other river bank. Several of the new buildings were illuminated with spectacular moving picture displays on the side of them. Twenty years ago this whole side of the river had been farmland. An hour later we had returned to the jetty and then walked back to the hotel past the street sellers packing the waterfront area.
On the way back at 9pm at night the construction sites were all busy with excavators, pouring concrete and welding steel. These guys don't seem to stop in the rebuilding of China.
In the hotel restaurant we enjoyed a beer before going to bed and hoping for a good night's sleep.
Saturday October 25th.
Another poor night's sleep caused by the noisy traffic outside. We went into the city to look for breakfast and found a bakers that sold hot drinks. Just as we had ordered 'English breakfast tea', I had a wondrous vision - there on the back shelf was a box of 'Taylor's of Harrogate Yorkshire Tea', oh joy of joys!!
After finishing our pastries and cups of nectar, we bought some more cakes for tea. Norah wanted a book to read on the coming train ride and we tried a department store. No, but a helpful guy was good enough to write down the address of a book store that was indicated as 'somewhere down the street'. So we set off walking, trying to match our Chinese characters with those on the hundreds of shop fronts. It was another 'free books today' scenario and after half an hour and several language barrier interchanges we gave up.
Probably less than 5% of all signs here were in English and the same amount of people spoke it, so this was really 'being abroad'.
In early afternoon we caught taxis to the station and after a long wait eventually boarded the overnight train to 'Xi'an'. Travelling second class there were the usual two tiers of three bunks but you remember how the last train compartment did not have a door? Well this one did not have an end wall, just the foot of the bunks ending in the open corridor where everyone was walking past.
Luckily six of the group were in this one compartment and after securely jamming our luggage under the bottom bunks, we played card games for a while and then ate our cakes for tea. As there was no restaurant car on the train, they probably take up vital bunk space, trolley attendants walked up and down the corridors, selling drinks, dried foods and buckets of noodles.
The other delight on this overnight journey was the toilet. Just like the other trains, there are no 'western' flush toilets, just a moulded brass trench in the floor which, if necessary, you squat over. Quite a feat in a moving train and the toilets are locked when we're in a station, as they flush directly out onto the track below. Hey ho - just wanted to share that with you.
We were all suffering lack of sleep and retired early. As we lay down to relax a guy came and sat on the single fold down seat in the corridor opposite the bunks. Here he proceeded to (extremely) noisily slurp down a bucket of noodles, not a pretty sight. After over half an hour (can't rush a good thing), our noodle man had finished and walked off.
Other people would come and sit and chat, not too bad except that most Chinese do not use handkerchiefs and if they sneeze or cough, it just sprays out into the free space in front of them.
The overhead main fluorescent lights did not go off until 11pm and I spent a fitfull night, disturbed by people walking past my feet, by every train that passed us and by the lights and noise of the many stations that we stopped at. Oh the joys of travelling!
