Sunday 20 January

On the fast train to Shanghai with
Marzena

Left Quzhou today for Shanghai via the fast train (200kph). I had company for part of the way with Marzena (Polish English teacher) as she was going to Hangzhou to catch a flight to Thailand for the holidays. Most of the teachers are either heading home or taking a holiday during the 5 week semester break.

I don’t know how it happened but somehow I’ve managed  to acquire more stuff – some are presents from students that I couldn’t leave behind. The luggage allowance for the flight back is 45kg and I reckon I’m almost at the limit. I’d forgotten how much of a hassle it is lumping suitcases around and up and down railway stations, and the wheels on the small suitcase have given up as well, so it’s literally a drag.

Mega Hotel on entering Shanghai

The station is about 45 minutes from the city but the taxi rank was relatively close and soon was on my way into town. The drive in was pretty uninteresting – grey hazy sky, flat land, grey houses and apartments lining the road. In China they don’t just build an apartment block, they build sets of them in groups of 4 to 10.

View of the city with Oriental Pearl
Tower from near the hostel

As we entered the city huge office buildings and hotels began to appear. The architectural style is pretty much ‘build what you like’, I guess like most large cities in the world new buildings are a ‘statement’ or ‘expression’ and meant to impress. The result here is impressive buildings but in competition rather than harmony. Personal view of course.

Shanghai Dock Bund Hostel

I arrived at my hostel, the Shanghai Dock Bund Hostel – it was cheap and seemed to be close to the river. The people are nice and speak some English.

Flower wall on part of the Bund and
the skyscrapers across the river in the
late afternoon

It turned out to be an ideal location, only one street from the river and a short walk to the Bund.

The Bund (Wai Tung) has a very similar feel to Circular Quay in Sydney in terms of the water traffic, historic colonial buildings, tall modern buildings, grand views and long promenade, like the walk from the Quay to the Opera House. It features many grand buildings in gothic, baroque and colonial architecture which now all house the major Chinese banks.

Close-up of the flower wall

The new multi-storey towers are across the river and they pierce the sky competing with each other for attention. Individually impressive, but soulless. One had a gigantic screen on its side but about 10% of the lights were not working so it just looked tacky. I walked along the Bund with hundreds of other people (nearly all Chinese with a few scattered westerners) taking photos with the skyline as a backdrop. Winter is probably not the best time to visit - cold, grey skies, poor visibility, spring, summer, autumn could be a different story.

City view at night

On the spur of the moment I caught a sightseeing bus similar to what we had used in London. They are good for an initial survey of a city but soon remembered how slow it is to get anywhere. It provided a convenient way to check out the old city (good) and upmarket shopping area (bad). 

All the big fashion brand names are here, including Marks & Spencer’s, the cars; Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini. I remembered that the second biggest market for Porsche after the USA is China, and it probably applies to all of the other prestige brands – there are people with real money here. Nevertheless it was a good introduction to the night lights of Shanghai.

Traditional Xinjiang lamb and potatoes
 - Shanghai version

For dinner I decided to go to a local restaurant (rather than one of the western ones) and found a Xinjian (far western China) restaurant not far away, just across the river in a fairly downmarket area. I had the traditional lamb with potatoes. The flavour was great with a spicy tomato-based sauce strongly flavoured with star anise.

It looked innocuous, except it was so hot I had to have some delicious freshly baked bread (like Turkish) and a large beer to tone it down. On the way back I also had to have an ice block which also helped to take the edge off the burning sensation and return some feeling to my mouth.