Shanghai Reprise

Tea pot shaped like a pomegranate

On Monday, March 30, our official tour began in Shanghai.  Meg and I both enjoyed the opportunity to get a new take on this wonderful city.   We began at the Shanghai Museum, which permitted us to see the exhibits we had missed on our earlier visit.  I particularly fell in love with the ceramics, especially the tea pots, and found the exhibits of traditional dress fascinating, especially the effort to depict the dress of the minorities in this country.

Wall with Dragon Motif, Yu Garden, Shangahi

From there, we visited the Yu Garden in the heart of old Shanghai (the China Town of this Chinese city).   The same concepts that we saw in the Humble Administrator's Garden were realized here as well, but the creator of this garden was not humble.  The gables and walls are decorated in a far more ostentatious manner, befitting the higher rank of the creator of this villa and garden.

Roof Detail, Yu Garden, Shanghai

 

There was, of course, a Starbucks in the middle of the bustling commercial area adjacent to the park – looking distinctly out of place.  In the afternoon, we returned to Xintiandi to visit a beautiful example of urban redevelopment – a group of the lane houses common in the twenties and thirties redone as an open air shopping arcade with a beautiful fountain in the middle.  There we found a small museum showing how a Chinese family lived in such a house during the 1920s. 

Fountain in redeveloped shopping area, Xintiandi

But Shanghai is not only about its rich past.  Our night cruise on the river to see, illuminated in all their glory,  the commercial establishments along the Bund and in Pudong made manifest a modern city reveling in its success.  And that was only reinforced by rides on the world’s fastest elevator and the Maglev train to the airport, which achieves a speed of 431 kilometers per hour (268 mph).

Pudong lit at night

Shanghai is really a study in contrasts.   It is growing so fast that it can barely keep up with its new population, now about 23 million.  Building enough housing, roads, subway lines and other infrastructure is a race against time.  And so is finding solutions to its environmental problems.  Chinese people are very open about the pollution and how seldom they see blue skies (though we were very fortunate in that respect).  And Shanghai is very much at risk from changes in sea levels as it sits in a vast river delta.  Indeed, we heard that one of the new office towers in the Pudong has begun to sink.

As we leave Shanghai, we are becoming friends with many of the members of our tour.  Meg and I are the only Americans.  The tour operator is from England and all of our traveling companions are from England, Australia or New Zealand -- which make us the ones with the funny accents.  This is a group of experienced travelers, ranging in age from 14 to ... us (OMG, how did that happen?).  They show up on time, don't complain, and enjoy the delicious if sometimes unusual food we are served, so we are glad for their company.  Our next stops in Guilin and Xi’an will give us the chance to experience a more traditional China.