Postcard from Shanghai

If you now one thing about Shanghai, it's probably this skyline.

It is Qing Ming today so in honour of dead relatives or something, a good chunk of China not working in service has a three-day weekend. Many of them chose to join me in Shanghai because, yeah, honour and tradition and whatnot, but spring in China is pretty darned pleasant. 

Shanghai. 

Is. 

Great. 

The buildings know you love them.

While here, I heard people speaking Mandarin, Japanese, French, Korean, German, and a whole schlew of languages I couldn't identity. Restaurants are diverse in both style and substance. You see people in headscarves and booty shorts chatting on the subway together. No one seemed to find my face to be anything particularly interesting. As stipulated in the terms of my Chinese visa, I am required to note that the buildings themselves are architectural symbolism of the city itself. Old, new, traditional, and inventive. Shanghai is where I want to live and Beijing is where I got placed.  

This could be my life.

This was another one of those occasional trips I took with people: Monica, who joined me in Iceland, and Dani, a teacher I know from my Japan days. One of the main objections I have to traveling with people is that everyone is trying to "be nice" or whatever and wants to impress upon everyone else how chill and "go with the flow" they are, but that usually just ends up wasting time, leaves doing research to The Group, and everyone ends up compromising sometimes with a degree of wistfulness.  Our itinerary was basically, "go to Disneyland and do other stuff, too," but before we left I asked my companions to at least list one thing they want to do when we arrive and I, being the bossy pants I am, would put together a basic plan we could all follow or ignore.   

Maybe this is symbolic.  Maybe I just liked the green.

I arrived with Monica late Saturday night after work. Uneventful flight with a forty-minute delay on the tarmac brought us to Shanghai just before 23:00. Taxi into town and, huh, this is where we are staying? A foreclosed, 31-story hotel? Busted up and broken down. Peeling wallpaper and chained-up floors. What was just two years ago a five-star hotel, now featured local-run rental properties in the former rooms, one of them Monica and I would be using.  I wish I had a photo of that ghost lobby we walked through to get to our room.

Not a bad view though! 

Two beds turned out to be a bed and 2/3rd of a foldable floor mat sans sheets. I'm shorter and younger than Monica, and my body is pretty damned forgiving with odd sleeping scenarios, so I used a towel as a blanket that first night (words, strong words, were given to my AirBnB host). We had water but no cups. The hot water was turned off (I fixed it). And, you know, we were staying in an abandoned hotel. It was WEIRD. I mean. Unique. 

Random streets

Lucky cat loves you, too.

After a morning of exploring different parts of Shanghai including Yu Garden, prerequisite of visiting anything else in the city, little nooks near our...place..., parts of Old Town, and a very touristy and fun shopping area, Dani joined us for lunch and a trip out of Shanghai to Zhizaojiao, "the Venice of Shanghai," only 90 minutes outside the city by bus. 

Kinda reminded me Kurashiki, Japan, but much larger.

Pictures are easier to skim than words. 

Dinner!

Day two was Disneyland, an experience I'm outta do a whole separate post about 'cause Shanghai Disney deserves it. Let me just spoil that future post by saying, yes, the technology they use in the Shanghai park is superior to the tech I have seen in any other Disney park (and I have now been to EVERY non-water Disney Park in the world!).  And, yes, the behavior of the guests in the park was obnoxious.  Pushing, elbowing, line-jumping, garbage-dumping... yep.  Pretty awesome.  Add that to 210 minute long lines... Well, we knew what were were getting into and treated the whole thing like the cultural experience it was.

Things that are different in Shanghai.  People push and elbow the entire time.  People try to cut in line.  AND there are people in line selling knock off Disney crap!  LOL!

Obligatory selfies and scenes...

BEAUTIFUL park.

This ride is almost worth getting a Chinese visa for alone.
And then you ride Shanghai's Pirates and are forever done with all other Pirate rides.  

This should be near the park gate.

Okay. Disney magic finis (for now).

Red double-decker bus in front of that style of architecture and the NYSE bull?  Where am I?

Which brings us to the third and final day of the Grave Cleaning, literal translation, holiday. The three of us spent an hour together walking the Bund area before deciding splitting up to make the most use of the remaining time before the airport. Monica went for the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel Experience and the Pearl Observation Deck. Dani felt drawn to Yu Garden which Monica and I saw already, and I just thought People's Square and the surrounding alleys sounded fun.

I need to learn Photoshop so I can make the skies blue in my pics.

The cherry blossoms were peaked, all the street stalls and shops were open, and I found one of the Marriage Markets I've only seen mentioned on YouTube.  Quite a pleasing day even before lunch at CoCo Ichibanya and a walk down to Yu Garden again.  Terribly eventful?  No, but wonderfully pleasant little slice-of-life day and the price was certainly right.

Kinda hurt my feelings seeing "older" women born in 1987 being advertised.  

I've seen a little more of China now, it's a huge country I'm not taking advantage of, and now I realise even more how much Beijing sucks.  

See you again, Shanghai!