Shanghai

Shanghai is massive - 16 million population and by the looks of them all they do is shop. Shanghai is split by the river.  One side being the new shiny, commercial district with the sky line you will all have all seen and it looks and feels like a city from the future.  And on the other is the older, more traditional side of the city where we were staying. Our hotel was right in the middle of the action on the Nanjing road.  This was both a blessing and a curse. The street was a pedestrian shopping district with good transport links to the rest of the city. This also meant millions of people passing through day and night.  It was also a favourite haunt for the street sellers and we were asked a thousand times as we walked down the street to get to the various locations we were heading to if we wanted to buy wheelies (wheels you attached to the bottom of your shoes to make them into roller skates).  Ironically we only ever saw one person wearing them (besides the sellers) and he was 9!!!!!  What the hell would we want wheelies for...I have enough trouble staying on my feet as it is (just to let you into that joke, I seem to have developed the tendency of tripping over flat floors which Emma finds hilarious and before you ask it is not because of the drink)!

 

Our first night in Shanghai we met up with an ex-Ford friend of Emma's who has worked in Shanghai for nearly 3 years and gave us a unique insight into China, Shanghai and the people. An important piece of information we learnt was that the coming weekend was an extended bank holiday in China due to the World Expo and so 1.3 billion people would be travelling. The original plan was going straight to Beijing from Shanghai but after looking in the book we decided to break the 2000km train journey up with some sights along the way.

 

Shanghai's famous sky line contains the third tallest occupied building in the world, the "bottle opener" as we liked to call it. Unlike most sky scrappers it has a unique feature of a bridge between two towers at a height of 480m with a glass floor!!  Very impressive sight (but not for those with vertigo) and it offered great views of the city. It also won our applause for having the best view from a toilet anywhere on the planet (probably).  The end cubical of the ladies loos met the end of the building and was just glass.  Emma said that you certainly wouldn't have needed a book as the view was just incredible to look at.  Words do not do this justice and I am pleased to say that Emma took a picture of said cubical which we will try to post on the site soon.

 

One of the strangest things we saw in Shanghai was the Bund tourist tunnel that runs under the river from one side to the other.  I had read other bloggs about this attraction/event (call it what you will), however nothing can describe the oddness of this ride.  Its an electric train, similar to a cable car carriage that runs in the tunnel, but rather than a boring old concrete tunnel they have lined the inside with the most incredible light show you can imagine.  Not sure of the theme as the soundtrack talks about fire, water and other such rubbish, but as is usual with Chinese boys, they have spent some money on it. They even have inflatable people in the middle of the tunnel flapping their arms around like something on a ghost ride in a theme park, very odd. Again words do not describe this and I have some arty photos of the 5 minute journey.

 

We did think about staying for the Expo which was about a "better city, better life" but with large number of visitors expected for the first month and tickets sold out we thought it better to get out quick.  We had also got to the point that we were struggling to find things to do beside shop.  Unfortunately for Emma this is not something on our list of things to do on this trip!

Next Hangzhou, and some peace and quiet.....or so we thought!!