Smoggy Shanghai

  Shanghai, China
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

From the beginning of our trip we planned to see China on a tour. We didn't know anyone who had traveled it on their own and we thought our mom might join us for this part of the trip. As the time got closer, however, we started to add up the price of tours and thought they sounded well above our budget (even the "budget tours"). Mom decided to come to New Zealand instead. We planned this trip so far without a tour guide - what's so scary about China? Armed with a Lonely Planet guidebook we boarded a 24 hour train from Hong Kong to Shanghai.

24 hours is quite a long time on a train, but it gave us some time to meet our neighbors and read the guidebook. Since we planned on a tour, we did not do any research for this destination before hand. We managed to book some youth hostels from Hong Kong but we needed to plan our day to day activities. We would stick to the major cities, Beijing and Shanghai since we did not have much time and the trains between these cities looked like the easiest to manage. Trains in China are fabulous. We rode in a 6 berth hard sleeper to Shanghai. It didn't have a door but that actually made the room much more comfortable. Plus, unlike the coffins in the European trains, the tall Chinese trains had ample room between the beds. We got to Hong Kong without incident, went through all the visa formalities then walked out into the city of Shanghai.

Truth #1: The Shanghai railroad station during the weeks up to Chinese New Year is the pure jam-packed chaos. We thought to buy our tickets to Beijing before heading to our hostel but I couldn't take the crushing crowds long enough to find the right ticket booth (everything was written in Chinese anyway). We made our way down to the subway and realized at that moment that we had arrived in the city in the middle of rush hour! The subways were even more packed. God bless ATMs, we found one that liked our card and spit out a bunch of Chinese currency at us. We managed to buy two tickets and then queued up for the next subway. Everyone seemed to know exactly where the doors would open so we stood behind them. As the doors opened the people in line surged forward, people elbowing to make it in as quickly as possible. I thought to myself "Hold your horses, people! This is the first stop and there is plenty of room for everyone." Just as the thought crossed my mind, however, the doors slammed shut a mere three seconds after they opened. The girl ahead of us had her suitcase trapped in the door and tried to wrench it out. The door popped open for a second and the people behind her leaped onto the train (including us) before it took off for the next station.

As if the busiest train station and the busiest subway station we had ever seen weren't enough, we ascended the steps of our subway station only to find the busiest crosswalk we had ever seen. There had to be close to a hundred people waiting on each side to cross. At this point we are asking ourselves "What have we gotten ourselves into?" but thankfully as we headed the half mile down our street towards the hotel the crowds began to dissipate and became much more manageable. In our hotel's neighborhood it looked like any other city with a few more bicycles on the streets.

Our hostel had a great location but our roommates were allowed to get a bit out of control with the room. In Europe the rules are quite strict and anything left outside of lockers are tossed when the staff cleans at noon. Apparently this hostel did not have such a policy. The perpetrators were a group of German kids who were flying back home the next day. Though they were nice, we were not sad to see their mess go.

Shanghai is a city that is being massively transformed every day. Pudong, the new business/financial district across the river from the main city was just farmland in 1990 and now it has some of largest office buildings in the world. Old neighborhoods are being torn up and new bigger and better buildings are being put in their place. We realized that many things in our guidebook (2005 edition) had become out of date already. The "best outdoor market in the city" was now a pile of rubble and the best place to buy fabric had moved from one side of a neighborhood to another. Who knows if we will recognize the city in another 20 years? At least the restaurants we looked up were still where we thought. After falling in love with pork buns in Hong Kong, we tried to find them wherever we could here.

Dozens of markets and shopping malls were still present so we did a bit of shopping along with seeing the sites. As China is becoming the manufacturer for the world, everything can be bought here. While other countries say "This isn't made in China" (when we know it usually is) , here they say "This is export grade" whatever that means... We managed to get some non-export grade stuff for dirt cheap prices like "North Face" jackets that look great but are not anything you will find at REI.

We have seen the water - Don't eat these!

New Years markets were also hopping with locals trying to buy all the necessary gifts and decorations for the new year celebrations a few weeks away. It is the year of the pig so piggy banks, stuffed pigs and other piggy items filled the shelves. We weren't sure if Chinese are big candy eaters year round but candy appears to be the thing to buy for new year. Some shopping malls had whole floors devoted to the stuff. We tried some candied crab apples on a stick that everyone seemed to be eating and they were quite tasty. The popular hot milky bubble tea was also a hit.

We managed to see some famous sites around the city like the Yuayan gardens (with a busy Starbucks), the Bund promenade and the Oriental Pearl Tower in Pudong.

How did they get lions in China?

One big splurge was a drink at the Hyatt's 87th floor bar in the Jin Mao tower. The Hyatt has a hotel that stretches from the 52nd floor to the 87th floor of the tower, the largest tower in China (we can't imagine the room rates at that place - it is said to be the highest hotel in the world). Those who just want to see the view can pay to go to the 88th floor to the public observation deck. However, if you want to go to the poshest bar in town you can spend a little more money and head to the 87th.

View from Jin Mao Tower or Holy Crap, We are High!

Unlike a bar we tried to visit in Bangkok that required women to wear heels (an expense we didn't bother making just to get a drink), this bar only cares that you can pay the $30 minimum tab for two. With the incredibly steep prices, this was not hard to manage. 15% gratuity is tacked on, unheard of for Asia, but the servers here earned every penny. We hadn't had service so good since the states and it was a million times better than the service in China. They make handing over your money a pleasure. It is too bad we can't pretend to be rich more often!

Shanghai was a much cleaner city than we expected. People were sweeping their storefronts every morning and trash seemed to be picked up pretty regularly. It says a lot for a city when they manage to keep litter off the streets. What wasn't clean was the air and water. This is not just a problem for the big cities but we saw smog hanging over the country during every daylight hour of our train ride. It is pretty obvious that this is tied to the smokestacks dotting the country every few kilometers pouring out sooty smoke. Apparently the nuclear power plants we passed did not cut it for electricity consumption. One environmentalist said that the day China consumes the same amount of electricity per person that Americans consume will be the nail in the coffin for the planet. They just don't use take any environmental precautions when it comes to their factories and electricity production. Shanghai's smog on some evenings was truly breathtaking (and cough producing). When you look over the river you could imagine you were in London or Seattle on one of the foggier days of the year.

There are somethings you appreciate when they disappear, like English signs in transportation sites. While the subways have enough English to manage, the train station is hit and miss. We went to a ticket buying office in the city center, wanting to avoid the station at all costs. Every line was long and every sign was in Chinese. With no info desk, we decided to get into a line and try our luck. Chinese are famous for their refusal to make orderly lines, but the government are now cracking down with permanent barriers at these places so cutting is impossible. We had a woman who spoke a little English and she managed to sell us a ticket to Beijing. We didn't care what she had, we would take it. As New Year edged closer, tickets were getting harder to come by.