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!
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