Day Five

Today began with breakfast at the executive club on the top level of the Shanghai Four Seasons, where we finally met up with Jim, Dotty, and the other two members of our tour group. After a quick introductory meeting and a briefing about the finer points of traveling in China, we began our tour of Shanghai.

Our first stop was the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. Located near the heart of Shanghai, the museum featured a room-sized miniature model of Shanghai. The model itself does not actually represent contemporary Shanghai, but rather what the Chinese government intends to complete by the year 2020. The model itself was massive – and Fred informed us that the entire room was only the “inner ring” of Shanghai, the most central part of downtown. Note the people in the background of the picture to get an idea of how truly massive the miniature city was – not to mention Shanghai itself.

Next we took a leisurely stroll through a much larger park in the more central portion of Shanghai, ending up at the Shanghai museum. The museum itself was rather interesting, featuring ancient Chinese sculpture, pottery, painting and calligraphy that dated as far back as 2000 B.C. and earlier.

After our journey to the museum we visited the “Old Town” of Shanghai – a bustling and beautiful oriental marketplace, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Shanghai. While some of the buildings do date back to before the colonial era, our guide told us that many of the buildings have been newly built to mimic the old architectural style. The most striking example of this was a Starbucks (yes I stopped there) situated nicely in the ground floor of a seemingly ancient Chinese marketplace.

In the heart of the old town we ate at “Green Ripple,” one of Shanghai’s most famous restaurants. In fact, the walls of the restaurant featured pictures of the likes of Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, and the former President of India all dining at the restaurant. The food was awesome and we left the restaurant stuffed. Following lunch we traversed the fascinating Yu Gardens, a maze of walkways, small ponds, pavilions, and beautiful statues located at the heart of the Old Town.

Leaving Old Town Shanghai, we ventured out to the “Bund” – a bustling boardwalk in the former British concession with a dazzling view of the Shanghai skyline. The local merchants – constantly hounding us with various useless trinkets – were simultaneously annoying and amusing. On the way back from the Bund we ventured into the Shanghai Chinese Embroidery Gallery, where we saw some of the most fascinating silk embroidery I have ever seen. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a big fan of this sort of thing – but some of these works were truly awesome. My personal favorite was a stunningly realistic picture of a tiger – sewn with such fine silk that it looked three dimensional and realistic. Keep in mind that this is silk and not a photograph.

That concluded our first real day of exploration in Shanghai, stay tuned for tomorrow’s update!