Shanghai

Ray and LeAnn spent a couple of days sightseeing and shopping in Shanghai in conjunction with a business meeting Ray was at. LeAnn came in on Wednesday evening and spent Thursday on her own looking for bargains. She found a few at the fabric mart where she got some silk to make a cover for a blanket we had purchased in China on another trip. In addition, she picked out some fabric to have a couple of coats made, a long coat with dragonflies against a black background along with a nice red cashmere jacket. One of the custom made coats was completed and deilvered to the hotel that evening, and the next was brought in the next morning.

On Friday, Ray and LeAnn spent the morning at YuYuan Gardens, which is an old park area with traditional buildings and gardens. We stopped at a golden tree inside the YuYuan Garden area to throw lucky coins into the tree. The coins were tied to red ribbons which represented good health, family, wealth, and luck. The buildings now hold businesses selling to the tourist market. It is a "barter for the best deal" environment, which can be fun, but gets tiring after a while when you just want to get something quick. Prices usually start about 5 times higher than what you will end up paying. We picked up some embroidered displays and some Chinese porcelain dolls.


After returning to the hotel, we made our way across the street to the Urban Planning center in People's Square. Inside were historical photos, maps and future plans for the city of Shanghai. The most impressive part of the exhibit was a scale model about 100'x100' of the entire city of Shanghai showing the buildings, roads, bridges, parks and rivers. All the buildings matched the shape and style of what they represented. The time to put this together and keep it up to date must be tremendous.

We then hopped on a subway to go down near the US embassy and French Concession area for dinner. Since Ray had been eating Chinese food all week, we decided some Mexican food would taste good for a change of pace, especially since it is not readily available in Manila. A final stop at the fashion market for a few more bargains and souvenirs and then it was back to the hotel. Many touts hound you and try to get you to come to their stalls, especially if it is not on a main walkway. LeAnn asked one where the toilets were, so we started to follow him. We went past the signs for the toilets, and ended up at his stall. Another gal there said he thought LeAnn had said chocolate, not toilet. We all enjoyed good laugh over that one.

Saturday we got up early to go to the Oriental Pearl TV tower and the observation floor 263 meters above the ground. You get a very nice view of Shanghai and the surrounding area, except it was a little smoggy on Saturday. After multiple trips to Shanghai, seeing it from above helped pull all the pieces together. There were hundreds of local school kids on a field trip to the tower, so it was very crowded, but a lot of fun. Many of the kids would come up to say hello or ask you how you are doing. They like to use us to practice English. We walked down to the riverbank to visit with some of the terra cotta soldiers on the walkway and look across the river to the Bund area, which has old European style buildings from the 20’ and 30’s. The tower is on the newer Pudong side of the river while the original Shanghai is on the Puxi. The first large river crossing bridges weren’t constructed until the early 90’s, and this allowed the huge growth on the Pudong side.

We are going to miss our trips to Shanghai once we return to the states. It is such a fun and exciting environment. It is easy to get around between the subways and cabs in order to see the different parts of the city.