Shanghai Circus

Shanghai is crazy.  Three examples:

Tai Kang Lu

Tai Kang Lu is a "quiet corner in the French concession", with "cottage boutiques and a distinctly bohemian feel."  Replace "quiet corner" with "indecipherable maze of tiny alleyways" and "bohemian" with "packed with tourists", and you'll start to get an idea of the place.  See map below.  It did not help.

The Shanghai New Circus

Filled with juggling, balancing, leaping and spinning acrobats, the Shanghai Circus was so much fun.  The performers were mostly young, with a boy that couldn't have been more than 11 doing the 6-story chair balancing act.  Most of the act was flawless, with only one of the girls dropping her eight spinning plates, but since she was attempting at the same time to do a one-hand handstand on top of someone else's head, I forgave her.  The grand finale was the motorcycles-in-a-cage act, which I've heard of but never seen live.

The World Expo

Since we were in Shanghai, and the World Expo was in Shanghai, we decided we'd better go.  Unfortunately we picked a horrible day for it.  Windy, rainy, and with only one small umbrella to share between us, we were irritated and soaked before we even found the gates.

The welcome sign was the best part.  It appeared that someone used a computer program to do a direct translation of the chinese characters, and then didn't bother to check to see if it made sense.  If you can't read the fine print, the English translation reads as follows:

1.)  Tickets for the Expo with the date of receipt, one one, not overpaid, on behalf of the collar.
2.)  The park opened a day after the issuance, on a first collar, hair end up.
3.)  Booking tickets distinguish time, take it carefully to confirm admission time, upon receipt, refuse to replace.
4.)  In order to maintain the access legislation quickly after you open to receive.

We found the food building immediately, and nourished ourselves with fries, sausage, pho, dumplings, beer and ice cream.  All the important food groups.

We only visited the smaller side of the World Expo (it was on both sides of the river), hoping for shorter lines.  We only had to wait 15 minutes or so for the "Pavilion of Future" building, much shorter than the rumored 3-5 hours for the more popular exhibits.  Still a lot of people, though.

The exhibits were pretty cool to look at...

But not a lot of substance.  You wander though the huge exhibits, saying "Impressive... but what's it for?"

Only having about an hour left, we visited Prague for a cup of coffee...

And Beijing to see the drums they used during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics...

Before packing it in and heading back to the hotel.

Next time - Goodbye Shanghai, Hello Suzhou!

Shanghai Shopping. Sort Of.

Not to disappoint, but I didn't do a bit of shopping in two of the major shopping districts in Shanghai that I toured.  But let's talk about them anyway!  The first one was Nanjing Dong Lu, a pedestrian walkway flanked on both sides by major department stores, and known as Shanghai's Number One Shopping Street.

For those of you who know anything about shopping in Shanghai, you might know that there are a lot of, how shall we say, "imitation" goods available.  Normally they're on the sidewalk, free to browse, but due to the international scrutiny of the World Expo, the shops with these goods are now hidden away.  But never fear, as I am a white person in an asian city, I am a target customer.  I had dozens of people sidle up to me, showing me pictures of fake goods on cards and saying, "Hello, lady, you want bag?  You want watch?  Very beautiful, you come see."  I think that you then have to follow them to a back room somewhere, and needless to say, I was not exactly comfortable with this.  "Ignore all approaches." the guidebook said.  And so I did.

There would be more pictures, but that mile-long walkway was pretty much all there was.  After an hour of  walking, I was ready for a rest stop, and what better place than a swanky hotel?  The cafe of the JW Marriot, waaaaayyy up there on the 38th floor:

Next stop was the French Concession.  The French arrived in Shanghai in 1846 and leased land from the Chinese to establish their own neighborhoods.  They had their own electric power, bus system, and legal system within their own 4 square mile quarter.  But by 1930, the French were outnumbered 10-to-1 by Chinese gangsters, White Russian refugees, communist revolutionaries, and pimps and prostitutes.  Luckily for me, today it is a charming historic district and known for its shopping!

The Russians fled their homeland after the Bolshevic Revolution in 1917, and landed in Shanghai.  First stop was a "statue" (I say that because it was just his head) of the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin.

This villa used to belong to Song Meiling, better known as the wife of Chang Kai Shek (remember the guy who brought all those people to Taiwan?)

Now this is a statue!  It's Nie Er, who composed the Chinese national anthem before he drowned in 1935 at the age of 23.

On a lighter  note, the French Concession is filled with tree-lined avenues...

...cute little boutiques...

...and stylish shoppers who don't want their picture taken.

Look reeeaaalll, real close at the little boys pants.  Yes, they're split down the back.  Yes, that's so they can squat and go to the bathroom on the sidewalk.  Yes, on these particular sidewalks.  Watch where you step.

Next time, more... not shopping!  All this culture and I still feel like I'm failing Shanghai.

Old Shanghai

History Lesson Time:  When Shanghai was carved up by foreign powers way back when, one part of the central city (the first part to be settled) remained under Chinese law and administration.  These old back alleys eventually became notorious as a gangster- and opium-filled slum, and today the narrow meandering lanes and tiny pre-1949 houses are still standing.  The Old City seems to be the one part of Shanghai's metropolitan hodgepodge that conforms to romantic ideas of what China should look like.

Though the present buildings only go back for 150 years, the Confucius Temple is the most ancient site in the entire city center.  A temple was instituted here in 1294, probably when Shanghai was just a small fishing village.  My first challenge of the day was to try to find where to buy a ticket.  There wasn't a soul in sight, but a sign said "Do not enter without ticket", and I'm not exactly one to break the rules.  Finally, I found the ticket "hole" in the wall around the corner:

And with my 8 yuan ticket (about $1) in hand, I legally entered.  It was beautiful, and I practically had the place all to myself.

This rock is called "Cries of Dragons and Tigers".  According to the sign, the upper side of the stone looks like the deafening crying dragons and tigers, and the part near the water looks like dragons whispering.  Can you see it?

Exiting the temple, I started walking down the old city alleyways.  A common site were pet cages along the sidewalk, and these kitties looked utterly content.

But this one looked like it just had a bath and was pissed about it.

I almost missed the turn that the tour book noted because it was covered in laundry.  I though maybe that was on purpose (they had to get tired of tourists peering in their windows)...

But then I saw that there was pretty much laundry everywhere.

On an overpass going through the Old City, you get a glimpse of the old rooftops...

...overshadowed by towering high rise apartments.

Among the alleyways were small crowded rooms of people gathered playing mahjong.  It's that chinese game with tiles, sort of like gin rummy, but with major gambling.  I asked with a smile to take a picture of the inside, but the glares I got were so intense (the evil eye is the same in every language), that I quickly moved away and just took a picture of the outside.

Having had enough culture for one day, my tour ended at the perfect place - Din Tai Fun (an awesome chain dumpling place) followed by Dairy Queen and shopping for cheap tourist crap.  Shanghai fun!

Shanghai Blues

I was finally able to go to China to test my Mandarin skills!  David and I took a trip to Shanghai, the city which "If New York is the city that never sleeps, Shanghai is the city that never sits down."  I asked a friend what her advice was on what to do there, and she said, "Are you kidding?  Shop!"  I did do some shopping, but  mostly I just tried to cram in as much of the city as possible.  [Note:  If all my pictures look gray and hazy, it's because Shanghai is gray and hazy.  All the time.]

First stop?  Yu Yuan Garden.  Described in the guide book as "pleasant enough", this garden was built in 1559 by a local official for his father.  It's a maze of pavilions, rockeries, bridges and goldfish ponds.  Occupied and ransacked by the British during the First Opium War (1839), it continues to be in danger from raging hoards of local tourists.

But angle the camera right and it looks peaceful.  Below is the Jian Ru Jia Jing, or, The Corridor for Approaching the Best Scenery (that's really what it means).

This gingko tree is over four centuries old.

Being from Minnesota, I chose the Hall of Mildness...

A lot of the paths were Reflexology paths, meaning you were supposed to walk on them barefoot and give your feet a good massage.  Given the Shanghai penchant for spitting everywhere, I kept my shoes on.

At one of our last stops, our guide stopped us and said she was going to give us a test.  I immediately got nervous.  "Of these three rocks, which one is the most beautiful?"  I took a wild guess and answered the middle one, simply because it was in the middle.  "Correct!"  she said, and I felt smug, though I had absolutely no reason to, I had just chosen C on the multiple choice quiz.  Apparently there are different elements that make a rock beautiful, not that I can remember what any of them were.  All I remember is that I got the answer right.

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Shanghai is also known for it's silks, so next stop was a silk factory.  I knew silk was made from, well, silk worms, but I really had no idea how.  First step?  The worms make cocoons, which are made of one long string of silk thread.  But if they let the worms turn into moths and break out of the cocoon, then the silk isn't one long thread anymore, and it's no good.  So they kill the worms in right before they break out by baking them.  A little disturbing, but the worms probably don't feel anything, right?  Right?

A single cocoon has 1000-1200 meters of silk thread!  They have to find the end first, but they do that easy enough with a big brush.

It's too thin to make a single thread, so generally they use eight to make a full silk thread.  You can use more, the more threads the more expensive the silk.

After that the silk is dyed and woven just like any other fabric.  As with any tourist place, you have to go through a shop before leaving anywhere.  I did splurg and bought two silk pillowcases, but I'm afraid to use them because I know David will drool on them.

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The city of Shanghai is split by the Huang Pu River.  On one side is the older part of the city, where we were, and on the other is New Shanghai.

Since there's not much to do on the other side (it's mostly corporate offices), this is the closest I got.

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Next time, the Shanghai Old City, or Confucius Say:  Everything Has Beauty, But Not Everyone Sees It.