21st November: Hangzhou, China to Shanghai, China
It was our final morning in Hangzhou, which has proven to be one of our favourite cities so far. We didn’t have too far to travel today to Shanghai, so had time to take it easy and check out the morning market. This is a mixture of an open-air street market and a covered market with an incredible variety of food available. For us, the sheer number of different fruits and vegetables was striking – there are so many more options here at reasonable prices than the few boring and plain varieties you get in the UK. We were a little careful to only take oranges and bananas that we could peel though given the amount of raw meat also on offer. As is common in China, raw meat and butchers operate in very close proximity to cooked and fresh produce. Taking this a step further were live birds, fish, eels, frogs, snails, and turtles. We’ll stick to tofu!
For breakfast, we had a delicious contraption! These were made by smudging rice dough on a hot plate, then using the resulting crispy layer as a wrap to roll around a fried dough stick. Two of these were then squashed on the heat under a heavy weight, with sweet and spicy sauces added along with spring onions. The two were then combined and squashed again, with the fillings in the middle, to make a perfect hot, crispy, and flavourful snack. So good! We also picked up some spinach and mushroom baos, brown sugar buns, date cakes, and coffee and tea for the road.
Our train left from another vast high-speed station for the 90-minute journey along the plains of the central east coast. As we sped along at over 300 km/h, skyscrapers and towers were a near-constant sight in distance in every direction. The sun even came out, which had been hiding behind the clouds for almost or entire stay in Hangzhou.
It’s immediate noticeable that much of Shanghai was built before many of the cities we’ve visited recently. Our accommodation is only one stop up the line from the station but leaves a little to be desired, at least by Chinese standards. From the metro there is a very awkward walk under a bridge and then over a flyover to pass over the railway line. You wouldn’t think much of it in Europe but here it feels incongruous against the convenience of modern metro systems and residential areas. Our room is passable but we’re slightly regretting choosing this as our place to stop for an extended period. Perhaps it’ll grow on us, but regardless we need the rest, and this was the first opportunity. After some chill time, we caught the metro a few stops to a very swanky shopping centre. It felt like an airport in a petrostate! Perhaps this dichotomy is an apt introduction to China’s biggest city and the 11th wealthiest city globally.
We, however, were only interested in the vegan buffet, which was pretty standard fare – which is fine by us as it’s both delicious and varied. Today’s highlights were a perfectly balanced sour-spicy-umami mushroom soup, fresh pickled lotus, battered sweet potato, soy-marinated tofu, and lemon white tea. We could eat in these places every day!
