Shanghai

Shanghai, the Giant Anthill

 

Shanghai is insane, having reached maximum entropy a long time ago..  The entire city, like the rest of the China we've seen is a construction project. 

We and several million other tourists went to the Bund last evening.  The Shanghai skyline is just as terrific as promised, but you must view it from across the river next to a huge construction project that goes all night long because the city is preparing for Shanghai Expo 2010.  They're doing here what they did in Beijing to prepare for the Olympics..tearing down whole sections of the city and building up who knows what.  Some major landmarks are being restored (like the Peace Hotel) and are covered up completely.

 

We took a train from Hangzhou to Shanghai yesterday morning...a very fast, smooth, thoroughly modern train.  Amtrak, can you come here for lessons on how to run railroads?  As I was taking photos of the monitor, which flashed in Chinese and English, I realize that I made a mistake in reporting train speed the last time I wrote about trains here.  We traveled at about 140 km/hr...we were supposed to take a high speed train on the route from Shanghai to Souzhou, but we ended up on a local...even then, we were traveling pretty fast.

 

We're on our own in Shanghai..no tour guides, so we've been sputtering our way around and doing quite well.  Suzie and Richard are navigating, and they successfully got us to Nanjing Road, the Bund, Yu Yuan Garden, through the maze of the subway.  We took cabs back to the hotel, a sensible thing to do at night, but NOT in rush hour.  Cabs are cheap here, but one must be willing to give up control to the driver..any backseat driving will only bring great misery.  Suzie, Lily, and I are somehow able to just go with the flow of the crazy traffic.  I would never drive anywhere here, never..

 

Today we are going to the Shanghai Museum and to some other must see places.  We changed our hotel from the original booking, and are very glad we did, since from the other place, we would be spending all of our time in traffic trying to get to the places we can now walk to.  The hotel is eh, like most of the places we've stayed.  It is a bit more upscale than the others; upscale has been defined by Chris as a hotel where they give you another roll of toilet paper before the first one is gone.  I find this notion captures a lot.

 

We head to Beijing tomorrow, and our traveling companions head home.  We have a China Air flight at 9:25 am, which requires leaving the hotel at 6:50.  Lily will miss having Anna to be with.  This will be their last day together as two Chinese girls who blend in while their parents are the ones who stand out.  At one point, Lily had gone ahead of the group to get some photos, and I lost track of her.  When she ambled back toward us, I told her I was concerned.  She said, "Don't worry;  It's not hard to find you....I'll find you before you'd find me."  Hurray.  This is part of what this trip is about.

 

Right now, everyone is pretty tired.  We all got cranky yesterday until we had lunch.  Our Hangzhou guide was in charge of getting us breakfast for the trip.  Here's what he bought for the 6 of us: a plain loaf of bread; a bottle of orange juice drink; a package of saltines; a tiny package of pretzels; a box of pocky sticks.  Moral of story:  Do not put a 20-something very young man in charge of taking care of food for travelers.  We were starving.

 

Off to the races.  Looking forward to coming home.