Day of 1 of Exploring Shanghai
I have been in Shanghai for a total of 4 days now. I’m going to go through each day and talk about what I saw and did. I apologize, right now I don’t have access to post my photos with each post, if I find a computer with a SD card reader, I’ll add them…if not I’ll have to wait until I return home.
The first sight that I saw after arriving in Shanghai were the Yu Gardens and Bazaar. This is what I would consider to be located in the main tourist district of Shanghai. There are many shops and people who will walk up to you offering you hand bags and “rolex” watches. The main attraction here is the rock gardens. The rocks garden were … well…interesting for being a rock garden. I think my favorite were the dragons carved out of rock.
In this same area is the Huxinting Teahouse which was built in 1784 by Cotton Merchants. Ironically, right next to the tea house was a Starbucks. Shanghai seems to be a mix of East versus West … almost a collision course with the number of western restaurants here.
Wang Wei, my Chinese friend, and me then took a cruise on the Hutangpu River which splits the city into older (Pu Xi) and newer parts (Pu Dong). Even on the Pu Xi side, one can see the creeping in of western influences such as Subway, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut. On the Pu Dong side, the western influence is more pronounced with restaurants such as Hooters and Coldstone Creamery. I thought to myself – “Was I in China or just an extension of the U.S.?”
Overall, the river cruise gave me a good vantage point of both sides of Shanghai city. I got excellent views of the area known as the Bund (which contains mostly banks along the Pu Xi side of Shanghai.). I do wish I would have done a night cruise of the river as the city is extremely lighted up at night.
Somehow we found our way to the Pu Dong side of Shanghai where I thought it would be interesting to visit the Shanghai Aquarium. Shortly after entering the aquarium it must have started raining. This turned out to be a lucky and good indoor activity to do. I had not been to an aquarium since 2007 when I was in New Zealand. I guess I only go to these places when I am outside the U.S. I enjoyed my visit to the acquarium and even caught the staff feeding the stingrays!
After we exited the acquarium, the rain was coming down at a light to moderate rate. The next stop we made was to the Shanghai History Museum. I can’t recommend this place enough! Even for the people who don’t appreciate history that much, you can’t beat the price of admission – FREE. The musuem has sculptures, caligoraphy, currency, jade, furniture, and Chinese art on display. Some of the items were thousands of years old while others were only in the 500-900 year old range. Of course there were items weren’t that old as well. It is always amazing to see a little bit of history and China has a much longer history than the U.S.
Another plus of the museum was the gift shop. It was the first place I found in Shanghai that accepts credit cards. I was pleased when I asked “wo keyi shua ka ma?” and the response was “keyi”. Not only this, but the museum had alot of interesting and high quality books about China. My guide book said it was one of the better places to pick up books about China. Overall I was impressed with the items found in the musuem gift shop.
It was time to end the day, but day 1 of exploring Shanghai seemed to be quite successful.
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