24th November: Shanghai, China

Another day of the Shanghai chilled sessions. We did get out a bit earlier today though to enjoy a bit of a warmer morning. It was lovely in fact – 15C and sunny – as we hopped off the metro in Laoximen and found tea and coffee. The old Xintiandi entertainment street area around the site of first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was kitsch and bizarrely over-redeveloped as a shopping area which stood juxtaposed behind the sombre guards. We quickly moved on through park after park as we headed north. In one we sat and ate what was an was unusual lunch for China – a burrito! Not the best, but passable and good to have some slightly different flavours.

Just north was another park, People’s Park. This is a massive round site where (of course!) the British had a horse racing track after the opium wars! There are now two main green areas to the north and south, with cultural and government buildings across the centre. For the second time in China, we came across a ‘marriage market’ where parents trade information of their unmarried offspring with one another. The young people themselves are nowhere to be seen, but crowds of parents swarm around the hundreds, maybe thousands, of written adverts. Unlike in Chengdu, here the parents or relatives of the hopeful (do they know?!) were often sat behind their adverts waiting to seal the deal!

Looping back down along Nanjing Road, it was simultaneously cool to see the LED adverts and crowds and also imperative to escape from them as soon as possible! We took a side street to the Bund for another look across the river in perfect sunlight at the skyscrapers of Pudong. Looping back south along the Huangpu River, the crowds quickly dispersed, and we had the same view nearly to ourselves.

To complete our circular walk, we turned back inland through parts of the old city. This was eerie as almost all of it is boarded up, seemingly slated for redevelopment. It’s sad in one way to lose this character for what might become another homogeneous tourist street. In another, some of the old buildings aren’t fit for purpose so it makes sense. These buildings were constructed in the cramped land behind foreign ‘concessions’ to service them and you also couldn’t blame the Chinese for not wanting to preserve memories of such times. Unfortunately, the city god temple was closed. All around it were the kind of tourist shopping streets that I fear might become of the old city between here and the river. Shanghai does seem like a bit of a slightly confusing hodge-podge of styles and disconnected areas and is also repetitive in comparison to other more exciting Chinese cities. It could do with this area at least remaining walkable.

We’re not too sure if this rest is actually doing us good because when we do head out, the city is overwhelming. It could just be that our brains are finally catching up with weeks of overstimulation and just need a little longer to chill. We decided to head back to the quiet buffet spot from a few days ago for dinner, which was mercifully still not too busy on a Sunday. Battered courgette, sour mushroom soup, roasted aubergine, and wheat gluten ‘chicken’ slices were my favourites today!