Shanghai Sight-Seeing

Besides scams and selling, what does Shanghai offer? Well, Shanghai is a lot like…Shanghai. I can’t really compare it to any city I’ve been in, though it reminds me a lot of pictures of Hong Kong I’ve seen. There’s a bit of a feel of London—the wide, tree-lined streets and the bright lights at night kind of remind me of Piccadilly Circus—

(this, by the way is Nanjing street, the main shopping drag--I think this night pic is coolest, but imagine about twice as many people during the day and about a third of them selling something--purses, postcards, little pigs made of some sort of goo that splats when you throw it and then reconstitutes into a pig. The Chinese LOVE these for some reason--I saw about 10 people stopping to watch them today in Ningbo)

and along the Bund, which is the old trade part of Shanghai built up by foreigners, there’s a definite feel of Chicago: the building were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, so there are lots of heavy stone and cement neo-classical and baroque style buildings

By the way, I splurged a little and stayed in a hotel on the Bund built during the same time period. It’s got a pretty cool history—the first electric lightbulb in China and Einstein stayed there amongst other things—and while the room was nothing particularly special, the whole hotel had a sort of gloomy, fin-de-siecle, decayed glory, Shining like vibe. Here’s a link if you want more info: http://www.pujianghotel.com/

The Shanghainese will tell you that Shanghai is “Little New York.” Actually Shanghai’s population is about the same as New York STATE’s—the city has about half as many people. But New York’s skyline has been basically formed for the last few decades and Shanghai’s is constantly changing. All of Pudong, or the part east of the Haungpu river, has been built in the last decade or so, so the buildings are all ultra-modern and innovative.

The next morning I went down to the old city, which has lots of classic Chinese architecture—tiled, curved roofs, cramped streets—but the same jumble of people, and commerce.

The big attraction there is YuYuan, a garden constructed during the 1600s. It’s relatively small—about 6 acres—but with the walls around it and trees lining the area, the noise of the city is blocked out, and you only occasionally catch a glimpse of a skyscraper peeking over the edges of the dragon wall. Also, with all the twists and turns, you can spend hours wandering around. There are multiple pavilions, pagodas, and pools (the Chinese are so alliterative!), a giant rockery made of hundreds of tiny rocks carefully pasted together to give the perspective of a big cliff, and lots of carefully constructed walkways and archways that make it feel like the garden stretches further than it really does.

By the way, I learned many of these important facts by stalking the tour guides everyone else had hired. I would innocently stand around, pretending to take pictures, and listen in to what they said, and then wander off to another group. Just a little money saving tip.

One of the things I liked most was the amazing detail—elaborate woodwork in the pavilions, engravings on the walls and stone walkways, wooden carvings set into the walls, and lots of tiny statues and figurines set into the roof. I think this is part of what I like most about Chinese design and architecture—the way it forces you to keep looking and reassessing.




As a little side note, the Dongli village’s women’s chorus was playing in the garden. They were set up on a stage where opera used to be performed—it was framed by a peaked roof, covered in gilded details and hanging lanterns—and wearing traditional qigongs and playing traditional instruments. I sat there transfixed for a few minutes, until they started playing jingle bells.



The ride home from Shanghai was a lot less stressful than there and I got to enjoy the scenery. The area between Ningbo and Shanghai is mainly farmland: lots of raised fields with straight lines between them, farmers squatting in them, straw hats covering their faces and holding hand carved tools, water buffalo grazing in the fields, surrounded by ducks. Occasionally there would be a storage shed of some sort thatched with grass: the older ones had little trees sprouting from them.

Thus ended my trip to Shanghai: next installment, a dumpling party with my students.