Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 53 - Friday July 1st 2016 - Shanghai, China

So the alarm was set for another day out on the roads of Shanghai with Laura low person.

We were through the bathroom and had eaten breakfast all within an hour and where just about to leave the hotel room when we received a call to the room. It was Laura, she was running late, only about fifteen minutes so it was no big deal at all but this was now the second time that she had been late. We went down to the reception area and sat with the driver Mr. Unpronounceable until Laura arrived.

As soon as she got to the hotel we were on the road and off to our first stop of the day, The Jade Buddha Temple.

So the clue really is in the name of this place, it’s a Buddhist temple that is famous for housing a statue of the Buddha made from a single piece of Jade. It’s different from the other Buddhist temples that we have seen in China so

far for other reasons as well. The first and most obvious is the colour that the rendered exterior walls are painted,these are a bright mustard yellow whereas before now all the walls had been a terracotta red. Again the temple complex is made up of a series of buildings all housing different Buddha’s all bringing different things to those whom pray at its feet. Some for wealth, some for health, some for happiness, some for birth, many many different reasons.

The Buddha’s statutes here also seemed a lot more elaborate, more detailed, wearing more clothing and crowns and jewellery. The other guards and Buddha’s protecting them also seemed bigger and in more abundance, this was obviously a very wealthy temple to be able to have such intricate and detailed statutes made. The same could be said for the actual temple building themselves. These were also more decorative and put together with more skills such as stone carved windows with scenes of phoenixes and lions and pagodas and the Chinese symbol for wealth. The alter tables were also more decorated and carved.

The most striking thing that got you though was the abundance of colour from the hanging silk lanterns and silk wishes and family names hanging form the alters and the many corridors around the many temple buildings.

Apparently Chinese families and companies pay a lot of money to have their family name or company name hung from the temples ceiling believing it will bring luck and prosperity to them or their place of work. These are hung in the temple for a period of a month at a time and there is apparently a waiting list to have your family have a hanging silk sash in this particular temple.

The jade Buddha itself is housed on the first floor of the middle building of the complex and it’s the one thing that you are not allowed to take photographs of and its quite policed as they have female guards watching all the visitors. I was really hoping that I would be able to take a sneaky one but it just didn’t happen and the last thing I need to do was get the guide into trouble and us removed from the temple.

It was also interesting seeing the temple as the builders were in. They were building new temple in the traditional style, apparently replacing one that had got so rotten they had no choice but to build from scratch. What made this interesting was seeing how simple the construction was prior to all the decoration and paining, basically what we were looking at being built here was little more than a garden shed, complete with felt roof but once the decoration is applied it ends up looking more like a Chinese palace.

It was time to move on again to our second stop of the day and into the centre of town and the Peoples Square. This is basically a bit like Tiananmen Square in Beijing in that important buildings surround it on all sides (though not as important obviously as the buildings in Beijing and this square is not a military square. So the buildings that I am talking about here are the National Museum, The National Theatre and The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall and it was this hall that was to be our second stop. Now when you write down that you are going to a planning exhibition it makes it sound quite dull but actually it was all very interesting even through to be honest it was a real whistle stop tour and we did not really get to do it justice. Laura was on a bit of a mission to lose us by midday as she had another couple or group coming in that she had to pick up but we saw enough to get the gist of Shanghai’s journey on becoming the city that it is today.

The Exhibition started in the 1600’s when it was just a small agricultural and fishing village that flourished due to the water it could harvest from the two rivers and the fertility this gave to the local land. The River Bund’s translation from German is actually market and it is its position as a thriving market place that bought Shanghai wealth and fortune and that has not really stopped even now, it is still the markets (but this time the financial markets) that put the city on the world stage.

Today Shanghai is huge and has the largest population of any city in China standing at 24.5 million at the last count but hey think it is actually higher than this. The city itself covers an area of some 6340km and is made up of a total of 15 districts and it is still very much growing today. It’s scary to think that in 1965 they estimate that the population of Shanghai was roughly 11 million and by 2013 that had grown to 24 million, you can only guess what an exact figure would be for today.

The centre piece of the planning exhibition is a scale model of the city out to the first ring road (Shanghai currently has five ring roads) and it’s absolutely huge and tremendously detailed. What it does show you is how little green space they have in the centre of the city, things improve as you make it up to the edge of the ring road but this is vertical living in practice, a micro compact extra-large city. Outside of the fantastic model there are books and books to flick through of historic houses in Shanghai, examples of all the different styles of architecture from the 1930’s onwards when Shanghai had opened up the port and let influences form all around the world be reflected in its buildings. There is also a whole section on green living and future cities and pollution. It really does make you think that the Chinese are more than aware of their problems with pollution levels. I mean you can’t produce over half the world’s goods and not have a problem, those maths just don’t work, but this exhibition made you believe they do have a plan but big changes like this take time but with the world watching nothing happens fast enough no matter how hard they might try.

Our next stop was on foot and just around the corner from the planning exhibition. This was the Nanjing Road, a main commercial shopping street in Shanghai. To be honest it was very similar from the pedestrianised street we had been up and down in Beijing. There were malls and department stores, all the brands that we had seen before. The main difference was that this was busier and that it also came with the watch, bag and t-shirt touts that we had encountered in the market yesterday. As soon as they see a westerner they are on a mission to get you. It’s obviously illegal as they discreetly get their cardboard advertising out from under their t-shirt or from within a bag shove it at you then hide it again before moving away but it does become a bit relentless after a while, again it was just nod your head and say no thanks.

Laura left us too it again after a short walk, she was honest and told us that she had some shopping to do so we had about forty minutes on our own to walk up and down the street and be hassled by the touts. There was nothing extraordinary about the Nanjing road to be honest. It’s not full of the super brands that some may associate with the Asian market, they are on the other side of town in the newer Shanghai where it is much more glitzy and glamorous. Laura turned up late again, by about ten minutes this time as we stood around the Haggen Daz Ice cream store waiting for her. She had been of buying presents for her son to give the family that will be looking after him when he goes to England. Her choice of gift? Two hand held make up mirrors, one with pandas on and the other with the Shanghai skyline, clearly pound shop fodder but it is indeed the thought that counts.

We were soon back in the car and heading for lunch, a restaurant right next to the bund river walkway was what we were told so the boneshaker mini bus and us headed over there. We were actually taken a back a bit by the short journey as we had not realised how close this area was to the river and how we could have walked here the other night if we had chosen to. On the map it looked so much further so to be honest they had really done us a favour by bringing us to the Nanjing road as it gave us a great sense of direction and distance.

So now it’s time for the drama of the day, something that did not end well at all but these things happen. Lunch or shall we say not eating that lunch!

We pulled up outside a restaurant just underneath the bund boardwalk, from the outside all looked well but as soon as we were shown to our table things went down a very slippery slope, quickly. The bench seat that they were asking me to sit it was absolutely filthy and was still covered with food and crumbs and dirt, the floors were not that much better and nor were the surrounding chairs or tables, we were really getting that sinking feeling.

We asked Laura if we could change tables or get the seats cleaned but there seemed to be a real standoff between our guide and the restaurant staff as they looked at us puzzled to see what the problem was. Despite Laura asking them to get a cloth it was just not happening so we moved tables and our food and glass of water was bought over to us almost immediately.

The water was brown, like seriously dirty looking water and we both said immediately there was no way we were drinking that. What then followed was a bowl of soup, a beef and onion dish on some kind of skillet and a potato and chicken dish in a really dark brown sauce. To be fair we ate a small bowl of the soup each and actually it did not taste that bad at all but the rest including the rice was either cold or tasteless and Trevor was convinced that the beef was not beef at all just from cutting into a bit. Partly because of all the filth around us and then the food we just decided there and then to leave it, hand our feedback form into Laura (for every guide we have had to fill in a form about the places we were taken and the service we had received etc) and get going under our own steam. This should have been the case after lunch anyway so it was not a problem but Laura was really unhappy. To be fair to her she really did try to sort it out and offer us alternatives but by now it was causing a scene with the restaurant and that made us want to leave even more. Despite her best efforts we handed over our form (giving our lowest scores of the whole trip) gave her and the driver the smallest tips we have handed out and headed for the door and freedom. The next time we see someone from the travel service will be the day after tomorrow when they come to pick us up to take us to the airport but that won’t be Laura.

The first thing on our mind was to get rid of the horrible taste in our mouths and quickly, You know when you get the stomach churning sensation knowing that you have just eaten something that was just no good for you well we had that.

There was a Costa coffee shop right in front of us virtually so we just went straight in there and ordered coffees and two cheese and ham toasties, the thought of any Chinese food at this point was a definite no no. The sandwich was lame, limp and again tasteless but at least it was in a clean surrounding and was the right kind of tasteless and by that I mean this was not going to make us ill and it did the job, the taste of the very dodgy Chinese was gone!

So here we were by the side of the Bund with the next day and a half to our own devices.

As the guides for Beijing and Xi’an had told us there is actually not that much to see in the city and had we known more we would have spent an extra day in Xi’an and cut a day from our Shanghai schedule. Internet searches had not really thrown up anything fantastic to do so we were having a serious debate about going to Disneyland here in Shanghai tomorrow when we have a full day our on our own. To be honest we re not really Disney people, its ok, we’ve been to the parks in Los Angeles and Florida and even made it to the one in Hong Kong but the thought of going here as well was more of a well there is nothing else to really do other than walk around the shops all day so shall we? That question would rumble on all day as we really did not know what to do for the best.

As for the rest of our afternoon? Well we first headed back up the Nanjing road, the shopping area we had not long left behind to take a much slower look around some of the malls and the shops. It was all a bit half hearted to be honest as we were not in the market for buying anything although Jonathan will confess if he had seen a bag that he really liked that would fit his new IPad pro that he had bought in Hong Kong he would have bought one, but we didn’t.

We wandered in and out of the shops in Nanjing for about an hour and a half before going off on a bit of a wild goose chase in search of an area called Xinitiandi.

Xinitiandi was an area that Laura low person had told us about. It was apparently the old French quarter of Shanghai that was founded in the 1930’s. This was a time when Shanghai had different areas belonging to different expatriate communities just like we have China town in the UK (well in fact everywhere in the world) and yes there was a British section too. The French quarter though was meant to be really picturesque and full of café and bars with a real street culture it sounded good so off we walked to find it.

Now the only tool that we had for finding this place was the hotel map that is hardly detailed but we thought that it would give us enough to hopefully stumble across it so with great optimism we pounded the streets of Shanghai for the next three hours or so.

No, we never found the French quarter even though we knew we were right on top of it according to the map but we just always seemed to be one more street away and it never revealed itself to us. Instead we walked through city parks and the most upmarket shopping street in Shanghai called HuaiHai Road.

HuaiHai Road is a 6km long road that the Chinese refer to as their version of 5th Avenue in New York or The Champs Elysees in Paris. Its full of the top designer brands, rolls Royce and Bentley car garages and top end restaurants and flashy cafes. It was great watching the great and the good of Shanghai come and go but these areas are so often soulless and this road was no exception if you ask us.

As we had not found what we had been looking for and Trevs feet were complaining about all the walking we had done today we drew a line on the day and headed for the Shanghai subway for the first time to get us back to the hotel. The Subway system here is exactly the same as the one we had already used in Beijing. It has the same ticket machines, the same security procedures prior to getting to platform and the same trains so it’s very easy getting around on it and it’s also very cheap at 30p for any single journey. It turned out that we were not that far from our hotel at all but we did need to get the other side of the river but within twenty minutes we were back at the hotel and putting up our poor feet.

There was not actually that much relaxing going on though as Jonathan still had days of blogs to write up and Trev had hundreds of photographs to sort so we both tried to take turns at the computer to get as much done as we could.

So after our disaster at lunch and then only having a sandwich we were hungry but after all the walking today we really could not be bothered to go back into the centre of Shanghai so we simply went to the pub next door to the hotel for dinner and a few beers.

The pub is called the Old Captain Bar and it actually brews its own pale and dark beers, the only ones on offer so we both ordered half a litre each (although we had both drank a litre each by the time of leaving).

The menu was a real mix of east meets west food and we both ordered ribs but there was a catch, they were going to take about fifty minutes to cook so out of haste and hunger we ended up ordering a burger. Now we don’t normally order Burgers, not unless we are in a rush and really do need it to be fast food but these burgers was really good. Fresh ground beef, seasoned really well, great salad topping, it just tasted yummy after our bad experiences with food in the day and with a cold freshly brewed litre of beer down us we went back to the hotel feeling more than satisfied with our fill.

One thing that cannot go unmentioned about the Old Captains Bar is the wall decoration. There we were sitting in this pub filled with a very mixed clientele when I noticed all the pictures on the wall were of naked or semi naked men all embracing each other in a very homoerotic way. Now I know what you are thinking, did we just stumble into the only gay bar in the village without knowing it as the wall décor definitely belonged in one. The answer to that is absolutely no, we hadn’t, believe me we would no. They just had an eccentric taste in pictures is the only explanation we can give you but believe me, those pictures were very saucy indeed!

We crashed for an hour or so before eventually turning out the lights in the room still totally undecided is we were going to go to Disneyland tomorrow or not? It has only been open here for about three weeks and is the biggest Disneyland of them all now so half of us says well why not, we can say we have been and it will fil the whole day. We decided to sleep on it, see what time we wake up and how we feel in the morning…. we are so so bad at making decisions! The big stuff, we can do that, the small stuff…. we take it right through the wringer and still come out not knowing what to do! Night all.