Skyscrapers in Shanghai

This is in the Pudong area, a newer section of Shanghai that's located across the river from the older part. We stopped by here on our way to the airport.

We went up to the top floor of an 88-story building. That's the architect's rendering. It's really pretty- covered in mirrored tiles.

Gen in the lobby with Jackie Chan.

The center of the building is hollow, so this is looking down 88 stories.

I think this is a wishing tree. They have similar things in Japan. You write your wish or prayer on one of the pieces of paper and then tie it to the tree.

The Oriental Pearl Tower. It was (obviously) very smoggy and cloudy that day.

Looking across the river to the older section of Shanghai.

This is the 3rd tallest building in the world, the World Financial Center. They also have a viewing platform, but it was more expensive to get in.

The hole in the top is supposed to reduce the wind. This building had a Japanese architect. So that's the last of Shanghai! I'll get back to Japan soon.

Walking Through the French Concession- Shanghai

This is the French Concession area, seen from our hotel window.

After we went to the Jade Buddha temple, we wandered around here. There was a brief interruption for a huge rainstorm, but luckily we were really close to a coffee shop, so we just waited it out. In the air-conditioning.

This used to be a private home, but now it's broken up into apartments.

Hi Gen! Nice fountain. Most of this area is residential, but there are also boutiques and cafes. We went into a boutique called Madame Mao's Dowry. I wanted to buy something just because of the name.

How's this for home security? You could have barbed wire, but broken colored glass is so much prettier. We also saw some fences topped with bamboo spikes.

This was a park near our hotel. There is supposed to be a street with lots of cafes and bars, but we didn't see it. Most of the restaurants in that area are Western food, and Gen wanted to stick to Chinese all the way.

This was actually the lobby of our hotel. The night before they had a harpist.

This was the restaurant we ate in for our last Shanghai dinner, called Yongfoo Elite. Another excellent recommendation from the concierge. Gen took this picture illegally and was scolded. It's a historic building, formerly a consulate. You walk up to it through a giant gate and a dimly lit garden. It was really pretty. The food was good, too. We had duck, crispy roasted chicken, Chinese steamed vegetables, and braised pork served with steamed buns. Both the duck and chicken were served with their (cooked) heads. I had to "bury" them under the garnish. It makes me sad when my food looks back at me.

Jade Buddha Temple- Shanghai

Here we are at the Jade Buddha Temple. This is the happy Buddha, not the Jade Buddha. You rub his belly for luck.

An outdoor shot of the temple. The cab driver dropped us off at the exit, which is around the corner from the entrance. We tried to go in the exit and the guard yelled at us, so we wandered up and down the exit block for a while before we figured it out.

The temple was a collection of at least 5 different buildings. This one housed the Hall of Kings and some other Buddhas. There were also boddhavistas, but I'm not sure what the difference is between those and the Buddhas. Except our guide said men usually pray to Buddha and women to boddavista.

A pretty wood carving on the temple wall.

Upstairs in the Jade Buddha's temple. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take pictures of the Jade Buddha, but it was pretty. Very big, and carved entirely of white jade. Plus, his room was air-conditioned so we contemplated his beauty for a long while.

Praying at the temple.

A Buddha. You really can get taken to the cleaners at this temple. First, we paid the admission fee. I can't remember how much it was, but it was pretty reasonable. Then we got a free English-speaking guide, which honestly was nice. She was sweet. But then the "end" of the tour is a souvenir shop, but it's dolled up to look like a museum. (That was where the happy Buddha was.) So another guide tries to get you to buy anything and everything that you look at or seem interested in and they say that all the profits are for charity. But this is China, so I don't really believe them. Then, after buying something (natch) we went back outside and were guided toward the Jade Buddha (we hadn't seen him yet) and then we found out we had to buy another set of tickets for that. What a racket. But both the "museum" and the Jade temple had A/C, so I wasn't complaining that day! Plus, our paintings are really cool. The guy just used his hands (no brushes) dipped in ink. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen him demonstrating.

I think these are some of the kings in the Hall of Kings. There were 10 altogether.

More kings.

More Buddhas.

This wall was covered with carvings of boddhavistas. The Buddha in the middle is standing on the head of a turtle. In Buddhism, the turtle represents the world.

Yu Yuan Gardens- Shanghai

This was part of our half-day tour of Shanghai. It's a huge complex with gardens in the middle and a market on the outside. It was really crowded. See the Starbucks? There was also a KFC, naturally.

Also part of the market. Apparently pickpockets are a problem here. The building on the right is a restaurant that the Clintons went to when they came to China.

This is inside the garden. I love the kid in the gazebo. He just looks so over it.

Dragons on one of the gates. If I remember correctly, Helen (the guide) said that dragons represent a female sensibility.

This gate had a warrior on one corner and a fisherman on the other. The warrior was for protection and the fisherman for commerce. A lot of the buildings have these little figures on the roof. I can't remember when this was built, I think around 1300.

A pretty fountain. This was taken from the crooked bridge, what has to be the most crowded pedestrian bridge in the world. I thought we would never make it across.

The interior of one of the buildings. This was a writing desk for one of the government bigwigs. See the calligraphy brushes on the left corner of the desk?

A less crowded bridge over a koi pond. It rained just a bit while we were here, but it stopped by the time we were finished with the tour.

Pretty butterflies back at the market. I would have liked to walk around the market a little more, but Helen was a whirling dervish. There was a stall in the middle of the market that was selling fried crabs that looked tasty. I wanted to try some (we hadn't had lunch that day) but we were hustled along.

Dinner- Shanghai

This was our first dinner in Shanghai. Gen told the concierge he wanted to eat seafood and we were sent here. He warned us that no one spoke English and there is no English menu, but all you do is point to your food and they cook it for you. It was a little more complicated than that, unfortunately. The extent of our Chinese was learned from Rush Hour, and it wasn't quite adequate. So we sat at the table for about 15 minutes, looking in vain for someone who looked like they might speak English or Japanese. Luckily, they managed to scrounge up an English menu and a very patient waiter to walk us around. And you really do just go up to the tanks and point at what you want, then tell them how to cook it.

This is the shark fin section. We didn't order from there. Expensive! Also, cruel. Do you know they just catch the sharks, cut off the fin, then throw them back in the water to die?

Abalone section. We didn't order any of this, either. Also expensive. I think they also had bird's nest. Shark fin, abalone, and bird's nest are always grouped together on menus.

Here's a rather unattractive picture of me with our first two courses. On the right is BBQ pork and on the left are scallops steamed with garlic. All of the restaurants we went to used non-disposable chopsticks. Better for the environment I suppose, but they're so slippery! Sometimes I had to resort to stabbing the food.

Second course. Crab sauteed with ginger and green onions. It was so messy. But delicious.

And the last course. This one was a little weird. The back of the plate is some kind of shrimp salad. It had shrimp, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and cantaloupe in a sweet mayo dressing, kind of like cole slaw dressing. The front of the plate are the shrimp heads, deep fried with chilies and garlic. This is when you can really tell we didn't speak the language. The shrimp heads were actually pretty good. I've never had them before. Then we finished with a peach and a mango. It was honestly the best mango ever. Gen's favorite part of the meal was the crab, but mine was the mango. Portions in China are HUGE compared to Japan. We're so used to teeny-tiny plates that we over-ordered at every single meal. This was a very tasty and fun meal, despite the initial ordering issues.

French Quarter- Shanghai

Here are some pictures from the French Quarter area. That's the upper floor of a French restaurant. It looked fancy.

There was a restaurant block and then two blocks of shopping. I found some really nice stuff at a store called Shanghai Tang. Expensive, though. I didn't end up getting anything, but they have some branches in Hong Kong that I might have to visit.

Nice little outdoor cafes.

We sat on the patio here and had a snack after our tour. This is kind of an expat/touristy area, so we didn't have too much of a language problem.

A pretty fountain. The three women stand for three virtues, but I've forgotten what they are. Prosperity was one. Happiness? Peace? We'll go with that. Our tour guide took a picture with both of us in front of the fountain, but it was so humid that the camera lens was totally fogged up and all soft-focus. Half of our pictures look like a Lifetime movie.

Gen enjoying his afternoon snack. We had spicy noodles, steamed BBQ pork buns, and some kind of shrimp dumpling. And of course, Tsing Tao beer.

Shanghai!

Last week was the summer holiday here, called obon. Traditionally, this is the time people return to their hometowns to honor their deceased ancestors. Gen and I decided to go to Shanghai. Above is the Oriental Pearl Tower. It lights up at night and looks like something Walt Disney dreamed up.

Some things I liked about Shanghai:

1. The architecture. It was a cool mix of European, Chinese, and space-age skyscrapers. That's the view from our hotel room.

This is a building on the Bund, the former English-occupied area. Unfortunately, it was under construction so we couldn't get out and walk around. The World Expo is being hosted by Shanghai next year, so pretty much the whole city is under construction.

Here's a traditional Chinese-style building in the Yu Yuan Gardens.

2. Navigation is easy. The city is laid out in a grid pattern and all the street signs are in English and Chinese. And there actually are street signs. Vastly different from Tokyo. Check out the bamboo scaffolding on that building!

3. The French Quarter. This was a cute little pedestrian-only enclave with shops and cafes. I love outdoor cafes. Tokyo could use some more!

4. Our hotel was really nice. The concierge was super helpful in helping us find some good Shanghainese restaurants (that had English menus!).

5. They have actual Diet Coke. None of this Coke Zero nonsense.

6. The prices. Everything was much cheaper than Tokyo. A bottle of water in a vending machine was something like 14 cents. Of course, the hotel minibar still charges $7 for a soda. Nice to know some things are international.

Things I did not like:

1. The traffic. You have no idea how scary it was to cross the street. Traffic signals are more like gentle suggestions that no one pays attention to. There are hundreds of mopeds and bikes that will zoom through any color of traffic light. Gen had to hold my hand and pull me across the street because I would freeze like the proverbial deer in headlights.
2. It's dirty.

3. It's smelly. People leave garbage out on the streets in overflowing containers. And the heat is insane. It's subtropical with 90% humidity. Makes for very stinky streets.

4. It's definitely less safe than Tokyo. I have no problem walking around Tokyo alone anywhere, at any time of day. Shanghai was just more seedy. Also, many people are definitely not very friendly. We just got the feeling that they wanted our money.

5. Communication problems. Wow, very little English is spoken. We didn't have a problem at the hotel, but no taxi drivers speak English or read Roman characters and even most of the restaurants we went to didn't have any English-speaking staff members. So it was a challenge, to say the least.


Overall, it was a fun vacation, but I don't think we need to go back to Shanghai anytime soon.