February 19, 2017
Three day weekends are my favorite times for a quick international trip. Because of my job responsibilities, I don’t have the opportunity to take extended time off to backpack, but I refuse to let that stop me from seeing new regions of the world.
Today is President’s Day, and I am in Shanghai China for a whirlwind 5-day trip after scouring google flights for the best priced exciting destination. I scored with a $450 RT ticket to Shanghai from Seattle, and jumped at the opportunity.
I departed Seattle on Friday morning, and arrived in Shanghai Saturday afternoon. We took the metro from the airport to Zhongshan Park, which was a grueling 80-minute ride (with a couple of mix-ups along the way – like missing a transfer and going backwards for a couple of stops). From the metro stop our hostel was about a 15-minute walk, but it was so exciting to start to see the different shops, food stalls and spas that marked the way.
When we got to the hostel we dropped our bags off and went back out to grab food. We walked past a couple of places that were a little too adventurous for me (platters of duck heads), but then found an awesome dive spot that allowed you to pick your own veggies, noodles and meats to be made into a soup. It was delicious, and my only mix up was mistaking fish cubes (yuck) for tofu.
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| Our first meal! |
After dinner, we explored a Chinese candy shop (note: no chocolate), and then found a spa that was still open for massages. Weirdly, we were turned away from quite a few. I’m not sure if spas turn into a different sort of business after hours, but I have a feeling some of them might… Luckily we found one that was open, and could get a Chinese Massage for under $20 USD. I thought it was awesome, as the process worked out all my knots and kinks, but my companion didn’t quite enjoy his the same and left in even more pain than the flight over there had put him in.
The first night was tough with some jet lag, but I was up and going by 7:30 a.m. on Sunday ready to go explore the town. I’m embarrassed to say, but our first stop was Starbucks for coffee and breakfast, as everything else was closed. However, we certainly made up for it with plenty of authentic food throughout the day. Our game plan was vague… walk to the river and see what we found along the way. It turned out to be a magnificent day, and we covered over 17 miles on foot and climbed the equivalent of 20 stories.
Along the way to the Bund, we encountered many beautiful parks, fun work out areas (known to us as “pulley parks”), and some beautiful architecture. I saw my favorite building yet – a cross over French-Chinese mansion just at the edge of the French Connection neighborhood. We also had the chance to marvel at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, and as we got closer to the Bund saw the Shanghai Museum and People’s Square. And tons and tons of skyscrapers, hotels and restaurants. We also stopped to sample along the way. I picked up a cob of corn, and my companion got to try a delicious pancake-like pastry filled with butter, garlic and chives. We also found some cool coffee spots that could rival those in Seattle for quality. After some serious walking (~5 miles), we made it to the Bund and got to see the beautiful colonial architecture that resulted from the globalization of the 1850s with the river became navigable from the Yangzhi. There were a ton of people strolling along the shore way, and we got to see some cool sites like the Financial District Bull and walls of flowers.
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| Shanghai Exhibition Center |
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| My favorite building in the French Connection |
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| Flowers by the Bund |
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| The second tallest building in the world in Pudong - Shanghai's financial district across the Bund from where we were staying |
We didn’t stay along the river too long, and quickly made our way to the Old Town area (Nanshi District) where we were wowed by the temple, floating tea house and bustling market place. The tea house, Huxinting, was over 200 years old! It was priced to match, with a cup of tea costing about $10 (which was really expensive compared to everything else we’ve seen), but it was a cool experience nonetheless. The weird part, though, was that they served the tea with little spotted fermented eggs, fish cubes, and shriveled candied lemons. Quite odd – I liked the lemons, but wasn’t much of a fan of the rest. After the tea house, we went to Yuyan Gardens, a traditional Chinese garden. It was really pretty, albeit quite crowded with tourists. However, I would highly recommend it, as it’s not only beautiful nature, but they also had a lot of interesting exhibits and stores within the grounds like an exhibit of the first stamps and traditional art. We also had the chance to munch some more on dumplings and bubble teas while we were in the old town. Yum!
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| God's temple in Old Town |
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| Huxingting Floating Tea House |
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| Architecture in Old Town |
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| Jasmine Tea and accompaniments |
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| Yuyuan Gardens |
On our way out of the Old Town I got the biggest fright of my day. We passed through an alley that was bustling with people eating their lunch and doing trades, and in the middle of the street was a big tank full of about 20 snakes! I wasn’t expecting to see it, so when I did I yelled out and jumped, and suffered from shivers for the next 2o minutes. I think my heart actually stopped.
Our next stop was the French Connection area, where the east truly meets the west and most of the expats live. While we were the only westerners around during the morning, in the French Connection area it seemed like almost every store had an English sign and there were people from Europe and America everywhere. We stopped for a beer at Shanghai Brewery, stopped and watched some skaters at a plaza, and strolled along Nanjing Road (the famous shopping district). We ended the day at Lost Heaven, a restaurant that served traditional southwestern Chinese food from the Yunnan region. By the time dinner was over (about 6:30 p.m.), I was about to drop from exhaustion. We walked another mile back to the hostel, played some pool and had a beer with the other travelers, and finally crashed around 8:30 p.m. after an exceptionally full day.
Today is looking to be equally awesome, although we’re getting a slightly later start. We’re heading to the Jade Buddha Temple and the Shanghai Circus, and tomorrow we’re going to Zhujiajiao, a nearby city with an ancient town in the middle. More to come then!
Day 2:
Day 2 didn’t quite live up to day 1, but it was a nice day nonetheless. The biggest difference between the two was the weather. Yesterday was frigid cold and extremely windy. I ended up layering my two jackets, which looked super goofy because one is long and the other is a waist-length ski jacket, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
We walked the 2 miles yesterday morning to the Jade Buddha Temple. It was a pretty temple, but we were a little confused by how it got its name because nothing in it seemed Jade, and it looked like the God’s Temple we saw the day before in the Old Town district. The one difference was the existence of a Jade Buddha in one of the top floors of the temple. It was cool, but again surprised us as it didn’t have the coloring we were expecting. One thing that I thought was interesting in both of our temple visits was that the Buddha’s were rather skinny. The big belly that I had associated with Buddhism growing up did not make an appearance, which makes me believe that something was lost in translation or Americanization. There wasn’t much around the Jade Buddha Temple, so after we finished looking around we started walking back towards the Bund. It was a pretty long distance to travel, and a bit uneventful. At one point, we were so cold that we decided to take a break, and stopped into a spa for a massage.
We made it to the river shortly afterwards, and walked along the shore under the bleak gray sky until the pedestrian walkway ended, and then made our way over to the fabric market where we were just going to look around. That didn’t work, and shortly after walking in we were being fitted for custom-made suits, dress shirts and jackets. We pick up the results today or tomorrow morning, and I’m excited to see how they turned out! The fabric market was near the Old Town, so after finishing our fittings we headed that way to stroll around, and were wowed by the city in lights. It was just gorgeous. I started calling the area Disney World because of all the attractions, lights and people. One of the more fun parts was the super-cafeteria that had over 30 stands for dumplings, steamed buns, fried jelly, and much much more. We grabbed a plate of chicken pot stickers, pork steamed buns and these fried buns full of ground pork for dinner. It was good, but all plates were a little cold since they were sitting out in a buffet line.
The very best part of the night came after dinner. Once we had satisfied our hunger and finished exploring the Old Town again, we snagged a taxi cab (first time of the trip!) to make our way to the Shanghai Circus on the edge of town.
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| Jade Buddha Temple |
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| Old Town at night |
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| Steamed pork buns and dumplings |
I have a deep appreciation for acrobatics, and always enjoy the sense of amazement I gain when watching circus shows. The Shanghai circus did not disappoint. It was like Cirque de Soleil in the U.S., but with fewer props and theatrics and more talented acts and acrobats. There were many times when I almost jumped out of my seat in surprise, such as when a man did a double layout on stilts! It was unbelievable. The acts were as follows: 1) Bicycle stunts (standing, handstands, 2 people per bike in handstands, 5 people on bike) 2) Balancing act – standing on an indo board, catching lots of things on his head 3) juggling of big ceramics and balancing on head, 4) Street battle with tricks through different rings, 5) Street battle with “diving board” launches (this is where the double backflip on stilts happened), 6) trampoline show and balancing spring board acrobatics, 7) Extreme flexibility, 8) aerial silks and 9) motorbikes in a cage. I know that #9 is a popular one to see at shows, but I almost lost my cool watching this group as they fit 8 bikes into one small metal cage. It was unbelievable. I was a little tired during the show, but it was such a great way to spend the evening. After the show we made our way back to the hostel by metro and called it a night.
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| The opening act of the Shanghai circus |
Day 3:
Unfortunately, the bed in the hostel was uncomfortable, so we decided to splurge for our final night and check into the Park Hyatt in the Pudong region of town using points earned from work travel. When we woke up on our third day, we packed our bags and started the metro journey to Pudong, which is across the Bund river from where we were staying. The hotel is situated in the World Financial Tower, which is in the heart of Shanghai’s financial district. While walking around I saw many suited people and young professionals who looked my age and were really well dressed. Everything on this side of the river is double in price, most notably the coffee. It’s a nice region though, and we enjoyed getting to see a different part of the city from the regions we had been exploring.
However, by the 3rd day we felt as if we had seen a lot of the attractions in the city, so we decided to make our way out of town to Zhujiajiao, a town 30 km west of Shanghai known for its historic canals, Ming- and Qing-dynasty alleys, bridges, and old town architecture. I read about it in one of the guidebooks I borrowed from the hostel. The book mentioned being able to take a 1 hour bus from Shanghai directly there, and luckily mentioned that the bus was pink and white and left from a station near the Shanghai Museum. The bus station was pretty far from our hotel, so we spent the first part of our morning walking back through town to get there. One interesting part of the journey was when we tried to cross the Bund River, and realized that there wasn’t a pedestrian tunnel other than the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. A little perplexed about how to get across, we went to the entrance to the sightseeing tunnel and learned that it was 50 yuan to cross (comparable to a full meal and a coffee). Hoping to save time by not re-routing, we ended up fessing up the money, and were surprised to find that the tunnel wasn’t somewhere to walk, but an amusement park-style ride! There were all sorts of flashing lights in the tunnel and we rode a little carriage for about 5 minutes under the water before making it to the other side. Interesting experience, but not something I would recommend. Once we got off the ride, we still had about a 20-minute walk to the station.
When we got there, I saw a pink and white bus, but everything was in Chinese and there was not a secondary English explanation. The people on the bus were also all Chinese speakers and could not aid us. I could match some of the characters on the sign to those that were in my book (luckily I had a picture of the passage on my phone), so I decided to just get on and take a seat. I knew I needed to pay, but didn’t know where, so I just hoped for the best. Luckily I had free data on my smartphone from T-Mobile (HIGHLY RECOMMEND), so I could route the journey on Google Maps to check to see if we were on the right path. Once we got started I could see that we were, indeed, traveling the right way, and a lady came up the aisle of the bus to collect fares. We actually did it all right, even though we were uncertain. The bus took an hour, and we made a few stops along the way, but we ended up in the terminal station in Zhujiajiao only a 5-minute walk from the old city tourist region.
The walk was nice, and we quickly found ourselves in a Venice-like town that had galleries, chocolate shops, clothing stores, and handmade goods all sold along the canals. Throughout the day I picked up a beautiful handmade leather wallet and a plaid shawl, and my companion got a really cool leather journal. We also had the chance to explore a watercolor paintings gallery and try some different food like freshly pressed rice cakes and spiraled potato on a stick. This town also had a pulley park like the one we saw in Shanghai, so we spent a little time playing there and got lots of weird looks from people passing by. Around 4 in the afternoon we had felt like we had a good feel for the town, so decided to make our way back into Shanghai to pick up our clothes from the tailors. Unfortunately, the traffic on the way back was bad, so we missed the store hours and had to go back to the hotel instead. It was a pretty low-key evening, even though we tried to make it more exciting. We had dinner and attempted to go out, but Tuesday nights just aren’t all that happening. Apparently, we should be going to the Southeast Asia belt for more of a party scene. Or just go out on the weekend…
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| The leather store in Zhujiajiao |
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| Canals in the Old Town of Zhujiajiao |
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| 14th century arches |
Day 4:
Day 4 was our final day in Shanghai. We were at the tailors by the time they opened at 9:30 a.m. to get our clothes and try them on. My companion’s suit and shirts fit like a glove and were handsome, but sadly my clothes didn’t come out quite as well. I got 2 pairs of pants, a blouse and a coat. The pants were awful… high waisted and balloon-y, but the blouse fit and the jacket ended up turning out really nicely. The pants needed some work, so as I tried them on the women put pins and lines so that they could be hemmed and told us that we could come back for them at noon. It was a dreary day, but we decided to take a walk along the Bund back towards one of the other hostels we had seen on the first day to explore the coffee shops around it. We had a quick meal and then walked back, and made it to the store right at noon. My pants were better, but they still weren’t great. I ended up negotiating the price down and we paid our deposits and left to go back to the hotel and pack.
We learned about a high-speed train from Pudong to the airport, and so once we were packed we splurged on a taxi (~$6) to the train station and purchased tickets. The train was epic. It took us only 8 minutes to get to the airport, and at its top speed we were going 430 km/hr! It’s the fastest passenger train in the world. Check-in, security and customs all took a while at the airport, but we could check into one of the lounges using our Priority Pass cards for a quick meal before boarding the 10.5-hour flight back to Vancouver and onto home in Seattle.
It was a really good trip, even though it was a bit of a whirlwind. We walked between 12-17 miles every day, and saw so many different parts of the city during our wanderings. There’s truly no replacement for a traveler’s mentality, and I return home calm, grateful and excited for the next adventure.
