Good Morning Shanghai

Hello everyone!  How are you all doing today?  Sorry about the short post yesterday, but it was getting on in the evening by the time we got settled in, and I wanted to get to bed.  I'm pretty sure Euphy and I are both coming down with a cold, so I'm trying to get as much sleep as possible.  I guess that's just the joys of operating in densely crowded urban areas - you're bound to pick up something.  I tried to get a post up this morning, but my net connection dropped out and I didn't have time for a troubleshoot.  Trying to cover yesterday and today in one shot.

Yesterday was quite the day!  It started off with a bit of a hiccup with the flight to Shanghai.  Unfortunately, since the Beijing to Shanghai run is a domestic flight the weight allowances for luggage and carry-on aren't as high as all the rest of our flights which, either starting or ending in Hong Kong, are considered international.  So we really struggled to repack things in a way that none of our bags would be too heavy.  After all that effort we ended up overweight on both of our bags... and the guy at the check-in counter didn't seem to care at all.  Seemed like a real wasted effort.  Then, as the plane was boarding we decided to not fight our way to the front of the line and just let it clear up.  So as we were near the end of the queue of people getting on the plane we saw all these business travellers with clearly no checked luggage putting multiple massive carry-ons in the overhead bins, leaving no room for ours.  It was a bit of a slap in the face given that we went to every effort to ensure that our carry-on luggage conformed to the rules and then they told us that they would have to check them because there wasn't enough room.  I informed them that since I was following the rules while other people were trying to cram full-sized suitcases into an overhead bin that there was no way in hell that I was checking my camera.  They found a spot for it.

So, all was well there, just more of an irritation than anything.  Also, when we landed in Shanghai my watch band completely fell apart.  I bought a watch with a metal band just to avoid that situation, but apparently the little bit that actually connects it to the watch was still just soft rubber, and after years of being on my wrist it eventually just rotted away.  So a bit of a bummer there as well.

The day picked up considerably after that though!

Euphy's Uncle (her Dad's cousin, I think the term Uncle is sufficient) picked us up from the airport and brought us into downtown Shanghai, which looks something like this:

Where Beijing feel just plain massive, Shanghai seems modern and vibrant.  The great weather we've had may contribute somewhat to my high opinion of this city, but it just comes across as very, very cool.

Euphy's Uncle is the manager of an up-scale Chinese restaurant in the heart of the Pudong region (pictured above) which is on the East shore of the river.  He treated us to a great lunch at the restaurant (Jun Yue Xuan, eat there if you're in Shanghai) and then sent us off with a friend to check out the Shanghai World Financial Centre which is Shanghai's tallest building... for now.  I get the feeling that title changes hands a lot around here.  They're building a tower right next door that is supposed to surpass the SWFC upon completion.

That's the SWFC just to the left, looking like a giant bottle opener.  At any rate, SWFC is still the reigning king, and our friend managed to get us into a small tour to the observation deck up top for free.  Sweet deal!  The elevator shoots you up, counting both floors and meters above the ground until we hit 100 floors and just shy of 500 meters.  The observation deck is a funky structure with terrific views out over the city.

Also, there's a washroom on the 93rd floor where the urinals face a window so you can look down on all the little people as you do your business.  That alone is worth the cost of admission, even if you common folk do have to pay to get in.

After we'd finished our tour Uncle's friend drove us over to the other side of the river to an area of the city called City God Temple.  There's actually a temple there called that, but apparently the whole neighbourhood gets that moniker as well.  To get from one side of the river to the other by car there's a tunnel:

Brief side note here, feel free to skip this paragraph if you aren't Jay.  Dude, this tunnel has got to be about two kilometers long and while nothing with enough power passed to prove my hypothesis, I believe that the tiles on the walls should lend the appropriate... ahem, acoustic qualities.  Now we just need to find a way to get our hands on something supercharged in Shanghai and we've got the makings of an entire vacation.

Back to reality.

We were dropped off in the City God Temple area of Shanghai and left to our own devices.  After the skyscrapers of Pudong it was a really shift when we found ourselves in a much older district of town.

While Shanghai seems to primarily composed of the ultra-modern, they have managed to maintain huge swaths of the old city.  In the heart of this collection of ancient building is the Yu Yuan Garden, a former private garden of an Imperial administrator that has been turned into a public park.  While a lot of the Imperial palaces/residences that we visited in Beijing were impressive in sheer scale, this impressed with its beauty and attention to detail.

The place was a labyrinth of small buildings, paths, ponds, and rock formations that formed twisting corridors.

I have no idea how long we wandered around in there, but when we got out my camera battery was dead.

Even the doors in this place were funky.

To Euphy's delight the fish in several of the ponds were so accustomed to the constant presence of tourists that simply kneeling down at the edge of a pond would cause them to flock to the surface and open their mouths for food.

After spending the afternoon marvelling at the design of the garden we returned to Uncle's restaurant where he put on a feast for us and some of his senior staff.  Sushi, jellyfish, sea bass, Wagyu beef... by the end I was about ready to fall out of my chair.  I was also more than a little embarrassed that I could only say "thank you" in Cantonese; it really didn't seem sufficient to convey my gratitude.  A few of our dinning companions were lovely young ladies who seemed fascinated by the strange white person sharing a table with them and have asked where they could procure one of their own.  A note to my single white male friends: learn Mandarin.  Right now.

By the time we left the restaurant it was dark and I'd had time to put a bit of a charge on my camera, so we headed out to the river to take some night scenery shots.  The area on the East side of the river was home to the old embassies and consulates when China first opened the port of Shanghai to foreign trade, and since Mao had the foresight to ban the use of heavy weapons during the liberation of the city many of them still stand today, just as they were in the 1800s.  That stretch of the city is referred to as The Bund for reasons that elude me, but it makes for some great night shots.

I even managed to stitch a few of the consecutive ones together manually, and since night eliminated the usual problem of shifting light source during the sweep from shot to shot, they actually went together quite well.

So, concluding that important business we returned home.  Uncle's brother is a doctor famed for his research into ailments of the kidneys, and so travels the globe almost perpetually, but maintains a home in Shanghai where we've been welcomed.  So having been treated to free meals, driven around all day, and given a free pass up to Shanghai's tallest building, we retired for the day in a bedroom on the top floor of a doctor's house.  This portion of the trip is making me feel like a VIP.

So that was yesterday.  I didn't get a chance to blog since we got in quite late, but I was able to sort through my pictures with a little bit of help from my GIANT BRAIN!  This is my first major trip with my new camera, and I'm finding that having better equipment has really liberated me to take shots that I wouldn't have previously attempted.  The downside to this is that I am photographing like an absolute madman and often coming home at the end of the day with 100-200 pictures to rename.  Fortunately I'm horrifyingly lazy, so I cranked out a Perl script to do it for me.  I still have to go through them to delete the failed experiments and set some basic naming parameters, but then the script does in 10 seconds what was taking me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.  I win.

That said, while I'm saving a huge amount of time now on photo organization, the writing of this blog has not yet been automated, and it does take me awhile.  It's getting late (again) so I'm going to have to try to be a little more brief going through today's events.  Fortunately that will catch me up, so hopefully tomorrow's blogging adventure will go a little more smoothly.

We got dropped off this morning at Nanjing Road, a huge shopping district that is pedestrian-only for some of it's length.  We took our time wandering around there until we made our way back to the river.  At the point we wanted to check out the Pudong side again.  Now for a traveller's pro tip: there's a ferry that operates between Pudong and The Bund quite frequently and it only costs 2 RMB.  That's about $0.30 Canadian.  Now, I didn't know this, but what I did know is that we were looking for a way across the river, and were standing beside The Shanghai Sightseeing Tunnel.  We'd been warned by a few sources that it was a bit hokey, but I thought that even if it was lame it would be a quick way across the river.  It is that, but at 50 RMB for a one-way trip it can't really compete with the ferry.  Also if you're allergic to stupid things it could be a fatal trip.  It's just a tram that runs through a tunnel that they've set up a really goofy light show in. Nothing too bad if you go in knowing that it's not going to be earth shattering in its awesomeness, but still not worth the cost of admission.

Number one, set course for the Lame Quadrant, maximum warp.Number one, set course for the Lame Quadrant, maximum warp.

Anyway, we made it over and enjoyed a lovely sunset over The Bund.

We then did the wise thing and took the ferry back.

That's a bit of a condensed version of today, but it really is getting late, and as I mentioned before, I think I'm getting sick so it really is time for bed.  I hope you're all having a great day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.