Sightseeing with a Local

I started my Sunday early, and was out the door by 9am. Still the subways were crowded with people, there is so much traffic here! You are literally fighting your way onto and off the trains in Shanghai, as there is not much respect for the 'wait for passengers to get off before getting on the train' rule. The pictures below were taken across the street from where I stayed - in a few years, there may not be any sky left!
































My first stop in Pudong - the Science and Technology Museum. I only had about an hour to spend here, but it's a really fun museum. Great for kids and adults, although it would be more fun to come with friends, as there are a lot of interactive exhibits and 3D shows.
















After the museum, I met up with my new friend and tour guide, Ginger, who took me to eat xiao long bao (小籠包) and wontons at her favorite place in Pudong. I love eating where locals eat!
















Ginger totally took care of me the whole day, after lunch, we had coffee, ice cream, and this cream puff dessert that she said I had to try!
















Waitang from the other side of the Huangpu River
















Oriental Pearl Tower - my favorite building in Shanghai





















We walked around this area called 新天地 (Xin Tian Di), and passed by many trendy restaurants, bars and cafes, mostly with a Western influence
































This was my favorite shopping area - 泰康路 (Tai Kang Lu), these narrow streets between residential buildings, mostly with art galleries, cafes and eccentric shops.





































Then we went to Wu Jiang Road 吳江路, which has food much like the night markets in Taiwan, but on a much smaller scale. There's a well-known 生煎包 (they translate it as fried dumplings, but it's more like pan-friend soup buns) place, so I had to eat a few. They're so tasty and juicy inside! It was so cheap too, one was like 15 cents!
















Afterwards, Tiff met up with us to go watch the Shanghai Acrobat show. It was so amazing. For some reason I'm having trouble downloading my favorite routines from my camera, but the performances were just so beautiful that I felt like I was going to burst into tears at any moment. There were also many amazingly skillful and jaw dropping routines.

For some reason, the lights on the buildings along the river shut off around 10pm (I guess to conserve energy), so we hopped in a cab and rushed to a lounge along the river to enjoy a few minutes of the lights. We had a drink and a light snack at this very nice, Western lounge with couches and candles and such. It was kind of strange, the server didn't even speak Chinese! The place was pretty empty, so we took some silly pictures. What a relaxing and awesome day!

Videos as Promised

I'm back in the USA, and with awesome internet connection, haha! Here are some of the videos from Taiwan. Enjoy!


Funny monkey at the zoo



What a sky lantern is 'supposed' to do - this was some other group's lantern



Our first lantern - which was really cute but pathetic



Lanterns floating in the sky



Panoramic view of Yehliu



The bubbling hot spring

Xitang (A Water Village)

I wanted to see a water village outside of Shanghai, so I went with a tour bus 1.5 hours away to Xitang 西塘. Basically it's an old residential area that was built along canals, with many twists and turns and bridges. Many of the water villages have become so touristy that they've started to build new structures to mix with the old to make it look 'nicer', but the drawback is that you're not seeing what was actually there hundreds of years ago. I heard that Xitang had not been subjected to such drastic changes due to tourism, so I picked this location for my experience of being transported back in time.

A very helpful sign .....
















Garden leading to the 'tourist area' of Xitang
































































There were so many people painting and drawing by the canal!
































Isn't it so picturesque? It's like out of a movie scene! In fact, a scene in MI3 was filmed in Xitang.
















While the appearance of the town seems 'ancient', you are made very aware that you are inside a tourist attraction. First of all, you have to pay an 'entrance fee' when you enter the town. When you look across the canal at the other side, it seems more 'real', like in the picture below. But on the side that you're walking along, there are shops after shops selling souvenirs. When I glanced in a few of the houses, I saw people using their laptops, talking on their cell phones or watching the Rockets game. Somehow the experience of being transported back in time wasn't exactly as I had expected. The good thing though is that the people still actually live in these houses. They go about their business and their means of income is opening up their town to tourists, and selling whatever it is that they think the tourists will buy. Of course, I was one of those tourists, who unexpectedly spent almost every RMB on me on artwork. I tried haggling a little here, which worked, but I still didn't have the heart to do what locals here can accomplish. I met an artist who said he had been painting 'snuff bottles' since he was 7, he's traveled all over China, painting and selling his artwork. Snuff bottles were originally used by the emperor and they are intricately painted from the inside. Which means the artist would need an extremely thin brush that can fit through the narrow neck of the bottle, and paint the inside of the glass by looking at it from the outside. I think it's pretty talented! I liked his artwork so I bought a couple of the bottles, I definitely paid too much for China standards. Man, I get suckered into things when people are friendly and chatty.
















































There were SO many of these bridges here, and they all look different!
































View from top of a bridge

Massage, Shopping and Lots of Meat!

Tiff's uncle owns a massage parlor, and offered to take me along with him and his wife for a free hour-long massage! What a treat! It was so relaxing that I almost fell asleep.

On a day that Tiff had half a day off, her aunt took us shopping. It was a beautiful sunny day. In fact, the entire week that I was in Shanghai, it was sunny and warm!

We ate at a 'little-eat' place, we had delicious wontons, spring rolls with the juiciest dah-bai-tsai ever, and fresh sesame tang-yuan. Everything tastes so much better when they're made on the spot and were never frozen!
















A villa that was built by a Westerner for his servants, a little out of place but it's very pretty.
















Landscape of a peacock outside of the villa
















After an afternoon of walking, we really built up an appetite for the all-you-can-eat sushi and BBQ! I haven't really tried raw fish (other than spicy tuna rolls) in awhile, and decided that it was time to try it again to see if I've acquired a taste for it. I think I can accept tuna and salmon now, especially since I started enjoying wasabi.
















Tiff's aunt and two cousins
















Tiff's uncle and the 2 year old, he is a TALKER for a 2 year old! So smart!
















I think this is the most I've seen Tiff in years! It was so great to have her for a roommate for a week, and drift to sleep as we lay in our beds chatting in the dark ...

Haggling Skills Required ....

I woke up my first morning in Shanghai to the first of many huge breakfasts sitting at the dining table waiting for my lazy butt to wake up. I'm the last one in the house to wake up and I have to microwave the food cuz it's already cold. I got really spoiled here ....

















I took the subway to the Huangpu area of Shanghai, and walked along East Nanjing Road (a tourist spot with tons of shops and restaurants, closed to traffic)















With all the tall buildings around, it has a NYC feel, except a lot more modern and spacious
















I walked to the end of East Nanjing Road, and arrived at the Waitang area, where you can walk along the Huangpu River and see the contrasting skyline on both sides of the river. On the side of Huangpu, it's all the old European buildings and on the side of Pudong, it's all the new buildings.































View of Pudong, isn't it beautiful? Looks kind of futuristic!
















Huangpu River
















After walking along the river, I got tired and found a Starbucks to sit down at for about an hour, I think the drinks here taste better, the foam is thicker or something. Then I decided to walk to Yuyuan, which used to be a temple but now has been transformed into a huge tourist attraction, with tons of shops. There were a few signs for Yuyuan, which I followed, but after about 10 minutes of walking the signs stopped appearing, so I just started walking aimlessly. There was a guy playing the saxophone on a balcony and people stopped to listen, it was nice and reminded me a bit of NYC.
















These pedestrian bridges were very helpful (not to mention much safer)! The cars in Shanghai will not let pedestrians go. You literally have to walk in front of the car and risk getting hit before they'll slow down for you. If you just stand there and wait for one nice driver to slow down and wave for you to cross, you will never cross the street (I'm not exaggerating!) At intersections where there are no bridges, I just follow the other pedestrians, figuring that they know best how to not get hit. One night I was crossing the street and when I was halfway across, my light turned yellow, and the cars were already moving towards me so that I started running for my life!
















I ended up walking for over an hour, asked a bunch of people how to get to Yuyuan and finally stumbled upon it. It's not a walk that people usually go on, I was told by Tiff's aunt to take the cab. But I'm glad I did it, I was able to get away from all the tourists and the business people, and see a lot of the smaller streets, old residential buildings and the 'average' people in Shanghai selling produce on the sides of the street and riding bikes.

















































They sold everything in Yuyuan. There were all these cute little shops along the street that were made to look 'traditional' like the buildings in the pictures above. I was told that you're suppose to haggle when buying things in China. But seeing that the shops were so 'nice' I didn't feel like it was appropriate to ask for too much. I walked into a tea shop. As I was glancing through their selection, a girl not much younger than me offered to let me try the tea. She asked me to sit down and proceeded to make tea for me and had me try a bunch of different ones. I was like, wow, they're so nice here! I ended up buying a bunch of packages of tea here, and she gave me a few dollars off the stated price, and a small package of tea leaves for me. I thought that was good enough. Boy was I wrong! Later everyone told me that you don't actually buy anything 'inside' Yuyuan. They mark up the prices like crazy and are not as likely to haggle because it's made for tourists. Oops, I got really ripped off with the tea =/ And ALL the tea shops give you free tea to drink, it's a sales tactic! Good thing I didn't have enough cash on me to buy more stuff that day. I have a difficult time with haggling, I guess from an American perspective, it's rude and considered 'taking advantage' of others or something, which is silly because if they were losing money on it they just won't sell it to you. I was told that you should usually be able to buy things at 30-50% of the stated price.

East Nanjing Road at night
















Afterwards, I met up with Pascual's friend, who invited along an acquaintance, who also brought along a friend (her name's Ginger), for dinner. Even though we only talked for a few minutes, I could tell that Ginger and I would get along pretty well. When she heard that I was wandering around Shanghai by myself, she generously offered to take me to eat shao-long-bao and see some sights in Pudong over the weekend! She's born and raised in Shanghai, what better way to see the city than with a local who's around my age! How awesome is that?! We met through 4 degrees of separation!