Tourist week

As it’s a Bank Holiday here this weekend, I decided to do some touristy things. Despite living in Shanghai for nearly 3 months, I hadn’t really seen much of it. I know that might seem weird but when you live here your time is taken up with work, seeing people, shopping etc etc – life, basically. And you get a bit de-sensitised to it too. I can see the Pearl Tower out of my office window, so the thought of visiting it never really crosses my mind. It’s like living in London and walking past the London Eye every day and not going on. And how many of you who live in London (or visit regularly) have never been on the Eye? I know I haven’t!

So I decided that this Bank Holiday weekend was my time to do some of the things I put on my Pinterest board about Shanghai instead of just talking about them. Not an easy thing to plan. As Shanghai is the biggest city in the world, you can guarantee that everywhere you go will have crowds. It's just trying to figure out when will be bad and when will be ‘Oh my God where did all these people come from please just get me out of here alive’ bad. (Also known as the Prodigy mosh pit, Reading 2009).

Friday night was the beginning – I went to an Internations mixer. For those of you who don’t know what Internations is, it’s a global society for expats. The members organise dinners, drinks, trips etc – I went with a girl from work that is also a member and ended up seeing another couple of people from work there too. Now, after a few weeks here I devised a rule – never go to a mixer on a Friday night. The reason is when you’ve had a long week at work, Friday nights are not ideal for making small talk with people you have no interest of becoming friends with. I did break my rule for this one however as it was at M1NT, which is one of the most exclusive places in town. It’s on the Bund, which I think I mentioned before is the name for this collection of beautiful old European buildings that sit on the bank of the river (Puxi-side). Real estate there is more expensive than anywhere else in Shanghai. Anyway, M1NT has a roof terrace that they only open to VIP members normally, and it has great views so I decided to go. It also has a restaurant and club and is very posh – think glam luxe noir. And they have a tank of baby sharks on the way in. What I realised, after about 10 minutes is that I was right – mixers on a Friday night are a bad idea. Luckily I was with people I knew, so we just had a few drinks and a nice chat, then went downstairs to the club bit. And I still hate nightclubs just as much as I did in the UK. Full of annoying pretentious people and a glass of wine is 9 quid! So we went to the Apartment instead which is over 3 floors and had an old school RnB room so that was good fun – although in both places I saw Western guys being ridiculously drunk and groping bored looking Chinese girls who were playing on their phones which was a bit grim.

Saturday I went with a girl from work to the Shanghai Exhibition Centre which looks like this:

 

It used to be called the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building and was built in a Russian architectural style for that reason. For years it was the tallest building in Shanghai, until the Sino-Soviet split in the late sixties. There’s an article about it on Wikipedia of course. Now it hosts all sorts of events and exhibitions and that’s what I went for - there was an exhibition on called Photo Shanghai, which is the largest photography exhibition that’s ever been held in Shanghai with artists from all over the world taking part. It was fantastic and such a great location to have it in.

And then yesterday I braved Old City and Yuyuan Garden. I don’t really know a lot of the history as there were so many dynasties and different eras etc it all kind of merges into one. What I do know is most of the older buildings (even some with historical significance) were torn down in Shanghai to make way for new buildings, skyscrapers etc. The Old City (including the City of God Temple and Yuyuan Garden) were preserved and rebuilt and is now a massive tourist attraction, with lots of shops, markets etc. During the Concession era (in the 19^th Century, foreign concessions were common in China – little pockets of cities that were owned and governed by other places  -  a bit like Hong Kong and the UK), it became just another concession but was still the government seat of Shanghai and of importance so as the concessions went one by one it was decided to preserve it.

I went at 9am as I figured it made sense to go before it got too busy. And it was busy, but when I left at 12 I had to fight my way out, so going early was a good a shout. It was stunning. I know the houses, shops etc would have been rebuilt but it didn’t matter. You see so many skyscrapers and apartment buildings here which are all new it was fantastic to see a little bit of history. Sure, there’s also a Starbucks and the biggest queue I saw all day was at a Turkish ice cream stand, but still. And yes you do get a bit pestered to buy ‘Gucci’ bags and watches but once you say ‘Bu Yao’ (I don’t want), they do leave you alone which is nice.

Yuyuan Garden was amazing too. It was actually started in the Ming dynasty (1500) and was passed from dynasty to dynasty and is now a heritage site. It’s full of plants and trees, little pagodas, dragon head stonework and everything else you would expect from an oriental garden. It was also very funny as ever time I tried to take a picture, there would be couples, friends etc taking horrendously posed pictures of each other with these awesome backdrops. I couldn’t stop laughing. And then there’s the selfie sticks. You may have heard about these – they’re claw-style devices that you attach your phone to and it gives you extra long reach to get that perfect selfie. No, I’m not joking. There was a lot of those too, although I did see a security guard trying to fish a phone out of the lake with a net, so maybe the grip on them isn’t great.

Anyway here’s some pictures – I am by no means a fantastic photographer but I think some of them came out OK!