Our final stop in mainland China – Shanghai. Travelling overland from Beijing has been great (OK, I know we cheated by flying to Xi’an, but it was MOSTLY overland). And it was not nearly as difficult as we expected. There were linguistic problems, but nothing you can’t get around with repeated attempts at an impossible language, miming, scribing Chinese characters in advance, and drawing pictures to explain what you want! We did amuse plenty of the locals with our attempts as you can imagine.
Shanghai itself is nice. It’s probably the place in China we’re most likely to return to soon – except for Hong Kong of course. It’s a very lively city, with areas of colonial architecture (looking a lot like London) mixed in with modern skyscrapers and bordering the narrow twisty alleys of the old town. It has a lot of life, both the old and new town areas. The only drawback to this is in places like Nanjing Road – a modern street bursting with lively shopping arcades and malls – where your footsteps are dogged with touts screaming ‘copy-watch, bag, shoes’ and thrusting brochures in your face. They usually give up on you pretty quickly if you ignore them, or if you crush their brochure to get it out of your way! Accidentally of course!
We wandered through many regions in the place as you might guess based on our travels so far. And they all have a lot of life – with the exception perhaps of the financial skyscraper area of Pudong. But even there the waterfront is lovely for a stroll, with fantastic views back over the river to the Bund. The Old town is a bit of a contradiction. It is centred around a lovely little Chinese Garden called Yu Yuan which, like the gardens in Suzhou, draws huge numbers of tourists. So, this being commercial Shanghai, the businesses have moved in forcefully, and built huge Ye-Olde-Chinese-e Style malls around the place. This sounds really tacky (and it is) but it still teems with life, and is actually very nicely done – lots of cool oriental roofs with soaring beams, dragon-shaped ornaments, and so on. But if you move 20m from this area you’re back in small twisting people-packed streets, ducking under overhanging laundry every few yards while jostling with hawkers and tiny old Chinese ladies screaming at their neighbours. A smidge different!
The areas around Nanjing Road, Remnin Square and the Former French Concession are again shamelessly commercial. This is where the big multinational chains have moved in. You get the usual McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks trio, but also for some reason there are loads of Haagen Dazs Cafes. We counted 11 of the places during our wanders – I’ve never seen more than one in a city before, not even the big capitals like New York, London or Tokyo! But here they are present in force, only to be outdone by Cold Stone Creamery who mix chocolate bits and brownie with fudge into your ice-cream freshly every time you order. Nice!
Anyway, tomorrow we leave mainland China to return to the SAR of Hong Kong. We stay there a few days (and Meet up with Gary’s parents who have decided to have a quick holiday with us) before catching the ferry to Macau (only an hour from Hong Kong) to fly to Bangkok. Then our Thai adventures will begin. But we will miss China. We already miss Japan! We’re not going to want to stop travelling at the end of the year at this rate are we?
Shanghai itself is nice. It’s probably the place in China we’re most likely to return to soon – except for Hong Kong of course. It’s a very lively city, with areas of colonial architecture (looking a lot like London) mixed in with modern skyscrapers and bordering the narrow twisty alleys of the old town. It has a lot of life, both the old and new town areas. The only drawback to this is in places like Nanjing Road – a modern street bursting with lively shopping arcades and malls – where your footsteps are dogged with touts screaming ‘copy-watch, bag, shoes’ and thrusting brochures in your face. They usually give up on you pretty quickly if you ignore them, or if you crush their brochure to get it out of your way! Accidentally of course!
We wandered through many regions in the place as you might guess based on our travels so far. And they all have a lot of life – with the exception perhaps of the financial skyscraper area of Pudong. But even there the waterfront is lovely for a stroll, with fantastic views back over the river to the Bund. The Old town is a bit of a contradiction. It is centred around a lovely little Chinese Garden called Yu Yuan which, like the gardens in Suzhou, draws huge numbers of tourists. So, this being commercial Shanghai, the businesses have moved in forcefully, and built huge Ye-Olde-Chinese-e Style malls around the place. This sounds really tacky (and it is) but it still teems with life, and is actually very nicely done – lots of cool oriental roofs with soaring beams, dragon-shaped ornaments, and so on. But if you move 20m from this area you’re back in small twisting people-packed streets, ducking under overhanging laundry every few yards while jostling with hawkers and tiny old Chinese ladies screaming at their neighbours. A smidge different!
The areas around Nanjing Road, Remnin Square and the Former French Concession are again shamelessly commercial. This is where the big multinational chains have moved in. You get the usual McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks trio, but also for some reason there are loads of Haagen Dazs Cafes. We counted 11 of the places during our wanders – I’ve never seen more than one in a city before, not even the big capitals like New York, London or Tokyo! But here they are present in force, only to be outdone by Cold Stone Creamery who mix chocolate bits and brownie with fudge into your ice-cream freshly every time you order. Nice!
Anyway, tomorrow we leave mainland China to return to the SAR of Hong Kong. We stay there a few days (and Meet up with Gary’s parents who have decided to have a quick holiday with us) before catching the ferry to Macau (only an hour from Hong Kong) to fly to Bangkok. Then our Thai adventures will begin. But we will miss China. We already miss Japan! We’re not going to want to stop travelling at the end of the year at this rate are we?
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