Day 12 – Shanghai – The People’s Park and the Financial District

Phew, a bit of a quiet day today, after being on the go so much recently.  We have nothing organised, so took the opportunity for a lie in, late breakfast and then a peaceful walk around the People’s Park, a large park in the centre of Shanghai, about a kilometre away from the hotel.

Since we’ve been in Shanghai, we’ve been accosted for the first time on the holiday by the dodgy gear touts.  When it first happened, we were walking down the Mall on Nanjing Road, when Anne said to me that a nice man had told her to watch her bag.  I had seen him doing it, and thought it was odd, because he didn’t look like a nice man, but appeared decidedly undesirable, as if he was selling something that wasn’t really above board.  Anyway, all was revealed two minutes later when a similarly charming looking character said “watch, silk scarves” and then it all became clear that the first man had been offering us copy watches and handbags.

The temperature today was 35 degrees, so it’s really hot, and not that conducive to wandering around in, so being neither mad dogs nor Englishmen, we spent a few hours in the hotel in the afternoon reading and catching up on the blog.  We headed out later in the afternoon, and for the first time on the holiday had to navigate our way through the public transport system ourselves to get across to the other side of the river and new Shanghai, as we wanted to be on that side of the river to see the night scape.  As usual, the public transport was very easy, the hardest thing being finding the one English word on the first screen we came to.  That word of course “English”.  Fortunately, with two of us looking, Anne found it.

The other side of the river is a totally different experience – and I mean totally - all the buildings are much closer, and there is a huge elevated circular walkway, so you get up quite high and it gives a totally different perspective on things.  Because the buildings are closer, there is no smog, so everything is much clearer. The different types of high rise architecture – all built in the last 25 years – are amazing. Actually, Shanghai is by far the cleanest place we’ve been to in China and the smog is not much of a problem at all.  We did read in the paper that the Government is doing a crackdown on the worst polluting cars, and they have set a target of getting 160,000 of them off the road in Shanghai.

Walking round the elevated circular walkway, we saw what was obviously an outdoor bar on the top of one of the buildings.  It was a low building, but since we’ve been in China, we haven’t really had many places where we felt that the ambience was what would make the occasion, but the umbrellas on the roof, looking out towards the Pearl Tower made it look like it could be the place, so off we went to find it.

All the Restaurants in Shanghai are upstairs, which took us a little bit of time to realise.  When we first walked down Nanjing Road we didn’t see any, then we started seeing billboards advertising them as being on the 6^th or 7^th floor.  Once we knew that, it was easy, as all the malls have restaurants on their upper floors, presumably where the rents are cheaper.  All the ground floor shops are the pricey designer brands. Anyway, we found the restaurant / bar on the fourth floor of the mall, and sat outside on the Terrace looking straight at the Pearl Tower for a couple of hours having drinks waiting for it to get dark and for the light show on the high rise buildings to start, which it did on the dot of 7pm and what a show!!.  After enjoying that for an hour or so, we headed off to find another restaurant (Thai), on the same level but on the other side, which also had an outside Terrace dining area, looking at more of the colourfully lit buildings. It was a memorable night! Back across the river we went using the Metro and back to the hotel. 

Things get back to normal tomorrow, with a full day tour to Suzhou, the so-called Venice of the East.