Shanghai Days 1 and 2

Some beers, a pie and a garden.

I came to Shanghai with a huge list of things it would be good to do, knowing that I couldn’t get to everything in just four days, but I think I’ve made pretty good use of my time and have certainly enjoyed myself.

People seem to make a lot of Nanjing Street, West and East: it’s a major shopping destination with all the big international brands as well as more local ones. There were a couple of pen shops on it I knew about but never got to, and the Bund - other than them, I found nothing to appeal to me. What I did like was the area south of Nanjing Street West - Maoming Road and the various small streets that radiate off it. There were some good bars - I went to the Tsingtao one as well as the Goose Island Brew Bar.

There are a lot of people living in this area, in low rise brick buildings. The brick ones are probably relatively modern, but those in the second picture are much older, although recently renovated. These are shikumen, a style combining Chinese and Western influences which emerged in the 1860’s. The stone frame around the door is what gives them this name. There were several lanes of these running off Maoming Road , and only a few showed signs of commercial use. Presumably people live in the rest, or maybe they’re used as an upmarket hotel.

Near here is the People’s Park - I’ve seen people doing all sorts of things in People’s Parks elsewhere in China, but not here - maybe it was because it was raining. I enjoyed a wee walk around the park anyway - it’s great that Chinese cities tend to have these green spaces right in their centre.

Walking home. these places caught my eye - I liked the message of the kebab shop and the wee bar seemed like it could be fun, if it had people there to make it. When I say a sign saying beef pie and coffee I had to investigate. To paraphrase “it’s a pie, Jim, but not as we know it” - its made of dough, fried and has tiny quantities of scallions and spicy beef. Totally delicious!

I got rather lost getting back to my hotel - I hadn’t realised that google maps actually works properly here, so was trying to navigate by getting my blue location dot to my red hotel dot, and made several wrong turns. The rain didn’t help, so when I finally made it, I grabbed a beer from the Family Mart and called it quits.

My big thing on Friday was checking out the Yuyuan (or just Yu) Gardens - or Garden of Happiness. The story goes that Pan Yunduan failed his exams, back in the 1560’s. To keep his parents onside, he built them a garden - I think it was bigger than it is today, but even now it’s 2 hectares. Back in the day, all of society would come visit and take tea in the garden - its had some rough patches over the years, what with the Opium Wars, the War against Japan and WW2 but, despite the rain and the crowds, going in was a lovely experience - starting with the 9 turn bridge.

I was a bit alarmed when I first got there, because the buildings looked quite new, just made to look old and wondered if that was it. What they have actually done is create a shopping mall or bazaar with buildings in a traditional style, which is free for anyone to go to, and to charge an entry fee for the garden. Here’s a couple of buildings in the shopping mall

That’s probably long enough for this post. Thanks for reading and spread the work to anyone you think might want to travel vicariously across China and Central Asia.

Cheers