Shanghai High
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2008
1
34
46
Trip End
Sep 04, 2008
Shanghai,
Shanghai,
China
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Our first full day in Shanghai was on Thursday and we wandered over to the Yu Gardens. I really wanted to go to a specific tea house, Huxing, which can only be reached by an iconic zigzag bridge. It's famous for hosting foreign dignitaries the likes of Elizabeth II and Bill Clinton. We each ordered a pot of tea and spent a long time there tasting each other's (rose, jasmine and oolong), relaxing and enjoying our surroundings. After, we stretched our legs in the actual garden part of Yu Garden, which reminded me of a Japanese garden I once went to in San Francisco. It's maze-like with many pagodas and koi ponds tucked into private niches at every turn. It was pretty but a little overcrowded. I was just glad we were there on a Thursday and not a Saturday.
Well, we did in fact do some shopping. We looked around for souvenirs in the countless stalls lining the bazaar. Jason bought a sword that he got a good price for but since he discovered he cannot ship it home (too big) it's become an inconvenience. However, don't worry. Swords are perfectly fine to bring on to trains and caused no problem at security.
We also went into a giant jewelry store in search of some pearls. It was fun to feel wealthy enough to be pampered a bit while we decided what to buy. The pearls, I am pretty sure, are real. The question is not about authenticity but about quality. And it's difficult to have a discerning eye when the person telling you what to look for in a pearl is also trying to sell them to you.
To conclude our day of decadence, we went out to dinner in the French Concession to un petit bistro our guidebook recommended. The food was unbelievably delicious. We ordered a bottle of wine, soupe à l'oignon, an entrée and even shared a cheese plate for dessert. (Dad, you know I got crème brulée!) Everything was wonderful. We had not one complaint and scarcely let ourselves feel put out over the high bill at the end of the night. Our three-person date was simply magical.
Friday we ventured out in the morning to People's Square, which is the center of the city and home to a few museums and a little bit of grass in the midst of skyscrapers. We toured around the Shanghai Museum, which had impressive ceramics, bronze and calligraphy collections. I really enjoyed looking at so many different Chinese art forms and artifacts, and I was truly amazed to behold ancient art more than 2000 years old.
Here is where I think we began to slide into our tired/ambivalent phase. It began raining and lethargy set in. We had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (I only convinced Jason and Adam to go when the rain really started to come down hard) and ate imitation chicken. Lunch did not prove to be sufficient time to sit out the rain, so we quickly bought umbrellas and got soaked on our way to seek further shelter. We wandered around a mall, felt like bourgeois capitalists, and then found a taxi to carry us home to our hotel for a nap.
Now, it's Friday night, and we had optimistic plans to go clubbing or, more realistically, to at least experience the Shanghai bar scene. All three of us knew that this was a lofty idea that would never come to fruition. Though we were still in bed by 11pm, we did go to Pudong, the 20 year-old skyscraper region of Shanghai that's across the river from the Bund. We took the advice of the guidebook and skipped going to the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower (the one that resembles Seattle's Space Needle) and went instead to Jinmao Tower. In the Shanghai Skyline, Jinmao is located next to the skyscraper we nicknamed the Cheese Grater for its handle at the top. I remembered reading that there is a swanky lounge on the 87th floor where you can buy expensive drinks in lieu of an admission fee for the observation deck.
The lounge was called, cleverly, Cloud 9 and it was very posh indeed. The views were magnificent since the rain had cleared out a lot of the smog. Somehow, the design of the space prevented me from getting vertigo because even though you're up so high, you are only looking out-and not over an edge. We ordered an obscenely expensive bottle of wine and a tasting menu of finger food that was promptly devoured. Needless to say, we were living beyond our means but only for one night, and it felt nice to pay 680 RMB... and not dollars.
And, sadly, our last day in Shanghai was sort of a bust. Fodor's had a page on Hongkou, a neighborhood in Shanghai that's known for the old Jewish ghetto and home to some of China's past avant garde writers. We spent the better part of 2 hours circling the neighborhood pointing to a picture of a synagogue and attempting to ask directions. We got pointed in every which way if people recognized it at all. To this day, it's a mystery if the place even exists or if some sick employees at Fodor's decided to send Jews (knowing they'd want to seek out other Jews) on a wild goose chase. Defeated, we ended up at Starbucks, and you can look out for a picture of us commemorating our efforts to make our Jewish mothers proud.
