A Weekend Expedition

My New Year’s Resolution – one of many – was to do more touristy things, both in and out of Shanghai. In other words, don't lie on the sofa all weekend, binge watching Youku and ordering Sherpas. This weekend, I put that into action and went on a little expedition – to the end of Line 9! 

So, Shanghai has a metro system like any other big city, which I have spoken about at length before. And similar to London, the lines go right out into what could be considered suburbia and beyond and it can take hours to get from the start of one line to the end. When researching things to do in Shanghai, there are a few things that come up time and time again, and two of them were out on line 9, so I thought I’d set off early, and do both of them in a day.

The first of these is Qibao – which is an ancient canal street in the suburbs. One of the interesting things about Shanghai is that on the outskirts of the city (1-2 hours’ drive from downtown), there are lots of water towns. And water towns are essentially a little bit like Venice – lots of canals instead of roads, pretty bridges, ancient architecture etc. Qibao is like that but on a much smaller scale – there’s a canal, some ancient architecture, some pretty bridges and there’s also a temple and a pagoda and some side streets with lots of market stalls and food vendors. 

It’s about 7 stops from the French Concession so not too far, and I went relatively early (about 1030am) as I was warned it gets busy – and the main streets certainly do. There’s one street that is just food stalls, everything you could ever think of on a stick, basically, and it was so busy I had to fight my way through to the end, which I wasn’t expecting at that time in the morning! Once I turned off the main street though and headed towards the temple, it was a lot calmer. The temple and pagoda were really interesting – pictures below. It was 5RMB to get in (about 50p) and was definitely worth it. I was the only laowai wandering around, but there were some older Chinese people. Inside the temple there were 5 or 6 statues or shrines. Some of them had altars, and all of them had cushions at the base for people to kneel on. I observed a number of people coming to pray/say their respects at each of the statues, some leaving money or fruit or flowers on the altar too. In the courtyard they were also burning sticks and leaving them burning which I’m guessing is a tradition – probably because we’re so close to Chinese New Year. 

So, from the ancient to the new…and weird. Second expedition of the day was to Thames Town, which is a suburb of Shanghai, based on an English town. It’s basically what Chinese people think England is like. The story goes that a few years back, the urban planners decided to make outlying suburbs based on other places around the world. So we have Thames Town, there’s a fake Sweden and possibly even an Eiffel Tower somewhere at the end of one of those Metro lines. I looked at the map of where it was from the subway and it didn’t look that far so I decided to walk…and walk…and walk. For about an hour until I found it. The walk itself was weird, it felt like you weren’t in Shanghai at all. For someone who spends most of her life inside the Inner Ring Road, it was strange to be outside – I imagine it’s how people from London feel when they venture outside of the M25.  I saw people playing football, a carousel outside a supermarket, people washing cars – typical suburban stuff I guess. Finally I came to a giant lake, where there were loads of older Chinese guys fishing, and just on the other side of it I could see a church spire so I headed that way. 

And stumbled into what was a cross between Suffolk, London circa 1901, and Milton Keynes. The place it reminded me of most was Lord Farqad’s place from Shrek. Mainly because it was deserted. By that I mean not completely deserted as this is China, but there were very few people around. Those that were, were all in wedding parties. It would seem that Thames Town is the place to come to get your wedding photos taken, particularly outside the fake church in the middle of the town square. I must have seen six of seven brides wandering across the lawn being followed by a photographer.

Other highlights: cobbled streets, mock Tudor houses, red phone boxes, old Victorian lampposts, a bar made out of a tram, what I’m pretty sure was a statue of Winston Churchill, and a ‘corner shop’. It was all so bloody British that I have expected a gang of youths to be hanging round outside the corner shop drinking cider and smoking cigarettes they’d bribed someone to buy them.

All in all, a very bizarre experience. Some pictures: