Tuesday 22 January

Billboard for the Bund Sightseeing
Tunnel

Terminal for the tunnel crossing cars

I found a small dumpling place this morning to get some genuine Shanghai dumplings (the ones with a little soup inside) for breakfast. I planned to continue with the sightseeing bus which was supposed to start at 9am, but which I found now started at 9:40.

So being a bit early, I decided to check out the Bund Sightseeing tunnel. Essentially a tourist attraction, it is a tunnel under the Huangpu River "with the double functions of sightseeing and transport as well". You travel in small ‘unmanned trail cars’ while enjoying "sound, light, cartoons and videos, as if going through the earth and enjoying an amazing experience" for 5 minutes.  It was actually a series of light shows with Mandarin & English voice-overs.  Didn’t do it for me.

Part of the old town district

The disjuncture between the old and
the new

Anyway, I was back at the Bund in plenty of time to catch the first sightseeing bus. First stop was the old town, which although geared towards tourists and filled with shops selling tourist trash and trinkets, was nonetheless very interesting historically and architecturally. Also with the area is the YuYuan garden and City God Temple.

Inside the YuYuan gardens

The YuYuan garden is fashioned in the classical style of Southern China featuring designs from the Ming and Qing dynasties. It’s a maze of rocks, vegetation, pavilions and ponds that seem to fold in on themselves so that, although quite large, it seem even larger. A very strong feature of the YuYuang gardens are the limestone rock constructions.

Quite cold in winter, but the gardens are probably very refreshing and relaxing in warmer weather. It’s been quite  interesting experiencing the seasons more dramatically than when living in Sydney.

The central courtyard of the City God
temple

Lighting incense before
prayers

The City God temple is quite different to others I’ve seen. It is primarily Taoist and it features a central courtyard with the various shrines around the perimeter. The three city gods are former officials and a general and one is especially designated as being the one to pray to for wealth.

It was also interesting seeing young people coming in by themselves to pray and make offerings. Religion is very strong here and the religious festivals are the major ones in China, especially Spring (or New Year) Festival when everyone visits their families. Apparently traffic and transport at that time is horrendous.

Stone lions outside the museum

The museum atrium - there
were people there but I
disappeared them

My next stop was the Shanghai Museum, featuring mainly archaeology and cultural history. Briefly it’s an impressive museum, with replica sculptures of lions and mythical beasts mainly from the Wei period in white marble.

The inside provided an impressive view of the very long history of China and the Chinese people and their achievements in very good displays of material culture – stone, bronze, pottery, glazing, carving, etc. The sheer quantity and variety was a little overwhelming. The accompanying English text was of good quality and quite readable.

Shanghai Urban Planning
Exhibition Hall

I wanted to see the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall with a rooftop ‘inspired by the magnolia flower’, but it was closed. Not sure why because it is supposed to showcase the future direction of building in Shanghai. Almost completely invisible from the street, there was a vast shopping complex underneath the building that even had street names so that you could find your way around. 

Because of the extremes of weather and shortage of inner-city space in much of China, underground shopping complexes are quite common - as they are in Korea and Japan..

It was not far from the People’s Park which housed the Modern Art Museum so I decided to walk there and have a look. On the way I saw my first group of men dancing – well they were actually rehearsing steps to the Gundam Style video by the Korean singer PSY, but doing it publicly in the park – very Chinese.

Qui Jie's pencil works upstairs and
Tian Wei's works on the stairwell
and downstairs

Detail of one of Qiu Jie s drawings

By now it was the afternoon and getting pretty cold (have I mentioned the cold too much?) and when I arrived it looked like the gallery was closed.

It has a black glass exterior that makes it difficult to see inside, but an attendant opened a panel in the wall so that I could enter – unusual.

On exhibition was work by two Chinese artists, Tian Wei (painting and ink works that represent western characters in caligraphy) and Qiu Jie (huge works in pencil and paper drawing on icons in recent and past Chinese culture). Both have worked for some years outside the country.

Xinjian salad, bread and
kebabs

Having had such a warm experience at the Xinjian restaurant last night, I thought I go there again tonight. I was a little more careful though and this time just ordered a vinegared salad, some lamb kebabs and bread (love the bread). Delicious.

Also, I may now have to revise my view that Chinese people are unusually loud – sometimes I’m wrong, true. This is the first time I’ve stayed in a hostel for many, many years. Spending time in the common room (writing this blog) with English backpackers who think that everyone is interested in hearing what they have to say on anything and everything. Having the volume turned right up on their laptop while they share what they believe are the most absolutely interesting video clips has made me realise that I may just be overly-sensitive to loud self-absorbed people.

This may be the Last Post. Tomorrow I fly out to return to Australia, signaling the end of my Chinese experience – and the beginning of a new Australian experience.