After another day at sea during which I attended some really interesting lectures on early twentieth century Chinese history and on the state (read fate) of journalism today we arrived off the coast of Shanghai Saturday morning.
Shanghai is located on the Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze and is the biggest city in Asia. We started up the Yangtze Saturday morning and did not reach Shanghai until mid afternoon. All the while, we passed miles and miles of container ports, shipyards, power plants and docks. The rivers were clogged with traffic. We joined an endless line of ships, mostly container ships, going upriver while another seemingly endless line of ships passed going downriver. Buildings, many of them high-rises, sprawled in all directions to the horizon. It wasn't so much an actual horizon as much as until they disappeared in the smoggy mist. If the air quality was this bad after a weeklong national holiday, what would it look like on a normal day? Pea soup? My sinuses burned and I had coughing fits the whole week we were in Chinese air.
We docked mid afternoon and as soon as the Chinese officials cleared the ship for debarkations, Michael and I took a shuttle bus to Shanghai Old Town for a quick walk around before our last dinner on the ship.
We passed the old International Concession, the Bund (the former European financial district), and the French Concession and stopped in the Old Town where the Shanghai Chinese lived during the period of foreign domination. From the 1830's to the late 1930's the British, French and Americans had enclaves in Shanghai and other Chinese cities. After the Chinese lost the Opium wars in the early 1800's they were forced to accept treaties giving foreigners rights to set up exclusive economic zones in many of their coastal cities. Shanghai became the western influenced "Paris of the Orient."
In recent years, the Chinese government has established special economic zones in Shanghai and other Chinese cities. Shanghai has regained its reputation for glitz and glamor, but this time the Chinese are in charge. The Old Town is old China as envisioned by entrepreneurs looking to make a Yuan Renmimbi from the tourists. As the daylight faded, the old style buildings lit up with strings of multicolored lights. Men and women hawked their wares from shop fronts and Michael and I were approached every few feet by shady looking characters offering designer watches and handbags. When we made it back to the shuttle bus, the guide assured us that the Chinese make the best designer knock-offs in the world!
There are, actually, some historic sites in the Old Town but we sure didn't see them on that first visit.
We debarked promptly at 8:30 am the next morning. Michael had arranged for a private guide to give us a four-hour tour of Shanghai. She was waiting for us on the pier as we left the ship. The tour desk people had advised us not to leave luggage in a taxi so our first stop was the Radisson Hotel, Shanghai. Taxis proved to be cheap. Our guide, she said her American name was Mary, called a taxi for each stop. We found another when we were finished at each site. The total cost was less than $20.00 American.
Our tour took us back to the Old Town with its maze of alleys and cobblestone lanes. Most of the tourists, and there were lots of them, were Chinese from outside Shanghai. There were long lines at the noodle shops. We crossed an historic zigzag bridge to the Yu Yuan Gardens.
The gardens were crowded as they always are but not as packed as they would become later in the day.
The gardens are actually an estate built in the 1600's by a Chinese court functionary. They were later expanded and embellished by subsequent owners. The interior settings and the landscaped courtyards were stunningly beautiful. At one point, we walked through a windowed passageway. Each window had been carefully set so that it showed a vista reminiscent of a classical Chinese painting. I took lots of pictures.
Next, we visited the Jade Buddha Temple. It is famous for its rare statues of Buddha each carved from a single piece of white Burmese jade. Our guide explained how Buddhism is practiced in China. This is different in some ways from Japan or Korea. The practice also differs somewhat from what I had seen in Singapore and Vietnam last January. Nonetheless, the similarities outweigh the differences. I took many pictures here, too but none of the jade Buddhas. No pictures are allowed. The temple is in actual use. It has an adjacent seminary that, according to our guide, houses about 100 monks. At the beginning of the hour, in this case 11 am, we could hear them chanting in the distance.
We got another taxi and drove across the river (actually under the river in a long tunnel) to the new area of Pudong. This is a glitzy high-rise city area that has been created in its entirety since 1990. We saw the Oriental Pearl TV and radio tower that has become the symbol of the new Shanghai. Once the tallest building in Asia it is now only the third tallest. Nearby are the tallest, the World Financial Centre at 1600 ft, and the Jin Mao building, the second tallest at 88 stories. We went to the promenade next to a huge convention center for a view across the river to the Bund, the historic European designed former financial center of Asia.
We finished the tour at the Taipinqiao shopping and restaurant area. This is a former traditional residential area that has been redeveloped to house a variety of Chinese and International restaurants and shops. After a quick look around, we returned to our hotel to rest.
Michael and I were pleasantly surprised by our hotel room. The hotel upgraded us to a suite on the twenty seventh floor overlooking Peoples Park. It was super luxurious with electronic controls for everything including a shade in a window between the bathroom and the bedroom.
We lunched at a noodle shop I discovered in the guidebook we had brought. We ordered by pointing at the menu items. No one spoke English.
Later we walked about a mile along a pedestrian mall that led to the Bund and the riverside. There were crowd of people everywhere. After a leisurely walk long the raised esplanade, we took a side street back to the hotel. That walk was most interesting. We passed through a neighborhood of nothing but electrical supply stores. There must have been at least a hundred stores, each run by what looked like family members.
Michael and I had dinner at a fancy restaurant recommended by the hotel concierge. Here one waiter spoke some limited English. Both meals we had in Shanghai were excellent. We were sensible, ate only cooked food, and drank only bottled water.
We took an after dinner walk around Peoples Park. The opera house had the most interesting architecture. The government buildings looked like government buildings everywhere with the addition of soldiers standing at attention by all the entrances.
In the hotel suite, we admired the light show. Many of the skyscrapers, the highways and public spaces were lit with cascades of colored lights. Michael thought this a demonstration of conspicuous consumption, a testament to China's new wealth. I had to agree. Too bad the soot from all the power plants generating the electricity contributed to the haze that obscured the view in the distance.
Monday morning we took the maglev (magnetic levitation) train to the airport for our flight home. The good part was that it was only an eight-minute ride to cover the twenty-mile distance to the airport. The bad part was that we had to drive miles and miles through heavy morning traffic to get to the station in Pudong. The station had no elevators so Michael and I had to wrestle four pieces of luggage each up the escalators. Our taxi driver had tried to tell us in Chinese, with hand motions, that it would be quicker and less expensive for us to let him take us all the way to the airport. He was right. One cannot, however, pass up the chance to ride a fancy train.
The trip home was routine and long. The most interesting thing at the Shanghai airport was the way the officials handled the crowds at immigration. Chinese don't stand in lines. They push ahead and are generally rude to everyone. To maintain order we were all corralled into little pens of fifteen to twenty people. The officials let out as immigration stations became available. Strange, but it worked.
Altogether, it was a wonderful trip. I experienced new and wonderful sights and events. I have not written much about life on a cruise ship. That would be a whole other topic. I will only say, a person can get used to the luxurious life.
No comments:
Post a Comment