Experiencing Chinese Life in Shanghai
Whenever I have gone somewhere to travel, I’ve always wanted to know how the locals live their lives. This may seem like a naive goal, but I have found that if you can get an understanding of how the locals spend their time that you get a really good glimspe of the local culture. So the day after checking out the Yu Gardens, cruising the river, and getting my fill of history, Wang Wei drove me to Fu Xing Park and a Buddahist Temple.
Both of the visit at the temple and the walk through the park gave me excellent insight into daily Chinese life. The park is located in an area known as the French Concession which seems to be a pretty swanky part of Shanghai. It seems you can definitely tell you are in the French Concession by the trees lining each side of the street.
Fu Xing park is relatively large. I would liken it to Shanghai’s version of Central Park but smaller and not covering the center of the city, but you get the idea – the park is a place where alot of people, both young and old, gather to enjoy spending time with family and friends. While at the park I saw families with their kids playing, old couples dancing, friends playing cards, and individuals excersing. It really was an interesting experience and the pictures don’t really do it justice.
The Jade Buddahist temple was another experience of Chinese life. One can’t tell from the outside how reverent or religious Chinese people are (at least I couldn’t tell). After visiting the temple, I can honestly say that Chinese people seem to be reverent, but only show that reverence at times they deem appropriate. The temple itself is more like a complex of open air buildings located right next to each other. Each building contained Buddah statues, some of which were life sized (and bigger). The people would bow in reverence and pray in front of the statues and sometimes leaving money after they were done praying. The acting burning incense was intriguing as well. Unfortunately, I am not that familar with the Buddahist tradition. One of the comments Wang Wei told me was that going to the temple was a very “Chinese” activity. I have to agree as I did not see any other tourist at the temple.
After experiencing a little bit of Chinese life, I headed to the top of the Jinmao tower. I thought this would be a good way to go up and check out Shanghai from an “88 story view”. The tower itself is 88 stories tall and represents the tallest building currently in China and one of the tallest buidlings in Asia. It is located on the Pu Dong side of Shanghai and contains a Grand Hyatt hotel from floors 53-87. Inside the tower is modern, clean, and efficient.
The view from the tower is spectacular. It gives you an idea of just how giant a city that Shanghai really is. I could see the many skyscrapers that cover both the Pu Dong and Pu Xi sides. I also got an idea of where the city limits ends. Another interesting thing was that from the top of the tower you could look down inside to the bottom. I was able to get a couple of photos of this view. Unfortunately for me, what I thought was going to be a clear day turned out to be overcast. So my photos of looking outside towards the city probably are not as good as what you would see in the guide books, none the less, I went up to the top of the tower because I wanted to see the city from above. If the day is clear, I highly recommend a trip to the top of the Jinmao tower.
The day ended with me having my Chinese friend trying to locate a store mentioned in my guidebook. We arrived at the address mentioned and the store wasn’t there. I tried calling the phone number listed in the guidebook for the store and got a “number does not exist” message. A couple days later I did some further research and found the new address of the store. I went to it and didnt find anything that interesting – fortunately the taxi ride was very cheap. I guess I am going to have to write a post on traveling with guidebooks after this trip is all said and done.
Note: I am now only 4 posts behind. I have the posts mostly written up but still need to input them into the site. By the time you read this post, I’ll be on a train to Xi’an to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. Hopefully I can catch up on my posts.
- Is the iPhone 3G essential Travel Gear for My Bag? [/caption] In the past, I have reviewed the iPhone 3G and discussed the impact of the update to iPhone 3.0 OS on my 3G. Now, I'm returning to provide perspective on how my iPhone 3G helped me as a travel device on my trip to China and how I think......
- Exploring Xi'an After meeting the person from my hostel and jumping on a public bus. She began pointing out some things like where to buy train tickets and some of the landmarks of the city. The hostel's location was excellent as it was right by the south gate of the ancient city......
- The value of Starwoods SPG points part 1 NOTE: I've decided to split this into two posts. Part 1 of my response is long enough as it is. The second part of my response will address the calculations made in Chua's second post "Travel Cards Part II". My friend Chua over at THINKchua.com and I share common interests......
- An Analysis of "Why Americans still don't travel overseas" I follow a number of travel blogs on my RSS reader, one of them being Nomadic Matt's site. When I saw his recent article on "Why Americans STILL don't travel overseas?", I wanted to see what Matt had to say on this subject. After I read the article, I thought......
- Goals and an update on my major announcement First my update to the announcement… Last week I announced that I was leaving my previous employer of 4+ years and taking a different position elsewhere. I wanted to give a brief update on the response to my farewell email and my observations of the new job so far. That......
Related Websites
- Enjoy Your Life: Change Your Point of View "Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud, and one sees the stars."- Frederick Langbridge, A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts If you’ve placed second in a writing contest, will you jump for joy and push for better results the next time or will you be discouraged......
- Irony: Travelers Replaces Citi In The Dow & Other Thoughts We've talked about the makeup of the Dow Jones Industrial Average before. My general opinion is that it's a worthless index with no true bearing on the real world. But that's like telling your fiance The Hills is a stupid show or telling your co-worker Fox News has a right-wing......
- Things to do in San Francisco pt 2 Here is a unique secret about San Francisco: Even the locals are often unaware of all of the gems that this fair city has to offer to its visitors. Here are some of the unique things that you might like to see and get to know while you are visiting......
- Punch Life In The Face The following guest post is from Steven Severson of HundredGoals.com. After reading his post, please visit his site and consider signing up to receive his free content. Disclaimer: I am not writing this article as a way to insult people or imply that I am somehow superior to them. I......
- Life With Reverence I’ve often wondered if laws are a stop gap compensating for the lack of insight because of how we have objectified everything. With no reverence we need laws? With reverence you could not disrespect your neighbour, and of course bad law is not law. You could not steal, nor turn......
Tim, when you were at the top of Jimmao, did the finish the “bottle opener” building right next to it? When I was at the top a year ago, there were some impressive cranes and hatches still being operated at the top (very high!). Also, I thought the view looking down into the hotel atrium in the middle of the viewing floor was cool and frightening.