June 25, 2006PudongEven though we started out trip in Shanghai and spent a full day there before taking off to Nanjing and Suzhou, it was it was only on our 7th day in China that we finally came to the place where most visitors start their visit to Shanghai: the Bund with a view of Pudong across the river. The Bund ("Waitan" in Mandarin) is the old British part of Shanghai, full of colonial architecture, which is a little strange in China, but not so strange as to be worth a trip. Across the Huangpu river from the Bund, however, one can see the futuristic skyscrapers of Pudong (Shanghai's newest neighbourhood), dominated by the Oriental Pearl Tower. We came to the Bund around sunset to take some pictures of Pudong in daylight and at night. We then took a psychedelic tourist train through a tunnel under the river. From inside, however, Pudong looked like a giant shopping mall, so we quickly got back on the subway and went back to one of the western neighborhoods for dinner. The next day (our last day in Shanghai), it rained heavily again. Luckily, we had reserved that day for a trip to the Shanghai Museum, which turned out to be quite interesting. Among other things, we are now fully versed in the history of Chinese porcelain, and can even discuss the links between porcelain and bronze styles. Filed under: Shanghai June 24, 2006More ShanghaiWhile we were selecting our hotel back in San Francisco, I felt somewhat encouraged finding a small "place to see" icon on the map not too far from it, concluding that the neighbourhood probably isn't all that bad. Reading our two guidebooks again on the plane I discovered that one of them considered that site one of a small number of "must see" places in Shanghai. On our first day we thus went looking for "Yofuo Si / the Jade Buddha Temple." Since we got up much too early, the temple was still closed and we decided to move on. After coming back from Suzhou (and being on a somewhat more normal schedule), we headed for the temple again. The temple is famous for two jade Buddha statues, which were brought for Burma and were supposed to go to a monastery on the nearby Putoushan island, but were left in Shanghai for one reason or another. Of course, we weren't allowed to take photos of the Buddhas. After the temple, we headed to do some shopping at the Xiangyang market. We were ready for some heavy barganing, but were still quite surprised. In Peru, it seemed that asking for about 1/3 of the asked price and settling for about 1/5 was the way to go. At Xiangyang, asking 1/7 and setting for 1/5 was more like it. The sellers typically asked for prices bordering on ridiculous (e.g. $50 for a jacket). Bargaining the price down to about 1/2 took no effort at all, but getting from 1/3 to 1/5 took some work. Being able to haggle in Mandarin turned out quite helpful. While almost all sellers spoke good English, prices just seemed to be taken a lot more seriously when said in Mandarin. The sellers often replied in a mixture of English and Mandarin, throwing in just enough Mandarin to test me, it seemed. - How much is this jacket? It goes on like this, we try walking off a few times, the guy acts as if he is really desperate, finally we agree on Y$70 (US$7.50), he says he is making no profit on it. I tell him that he can sell another one to the next gringo for Y$350, and hopefully make up for it. He laughs. I tap him on the shoulder say "pangyou" and go. Some other sellers, however, act pissed even after they get the money. Not sure whether this means we really squeezed them too far into their profit margin or it is all part of the act. (More likely the latter.) I find myself bargaining harder when the original price is hard. If it seems fair to begin with, I just offer 70% of what the ask for and take it. When they quote me a "gringo price," however, the gloves are off and it becomes a game of how little I can get the item for. After some heavy shopping, we wondered around, visiting a monument to a famous Russian poet which came out as "Puxijin" in Pinyin and encountering a condom vending machine. After that we headed back to our hotel to drop off all the stuff we bought and to take a break before "part two" of the day. Filed under: Shanghai Please leave your comments. The comments are moderated against link spam and may not appear on the site immediately. Comentários em português são bem-vindos. Puede escribir en castellano también, pero puedo responder solamente en Portuñol. Mozhno po-russki, no v nastoyaschii moment tol'ko v translite. You can also email me at yuri{at}freewisdom.org. June 13, 2006First Day in ShanghaiWe arrived in Shanghai's Pudong airport a little after 9 p.m. and headed for the maglev train (which was supposed to take us to Shanghai at 400 km/h), but were greeted with a sign "The Running is Over." We took a bus instead, having figured out from the map that our hotel was roughly in the Jing An area, and the bus seemed to go there ("Qu Jing An ma?"), so we took the bus and then took a taxi from in front of Jin An Temple, by showing the taxi driver the address of our hotel in Chinese that we got from the hotel by email. Next morning we walked through our neighborhood towards the railroad station to buy tickets to Nanjing for the following day. We then took subway to Nanshi - Shanghai's "China Town" where we also visited Yu Garden and then spent almost 40 minutes in line for what was supposed to be Shanghai's best dumplings. When we left the garden it started raining and poured for most of the afternoon, so we had to resort to hopping from store to store along Nanjing Lu - Shanghai's main shopping street. Filed under: Shanghai Please leave your comments. The comments are moderated against link spam and may not appear on the site immediately. Comentários em português são bem-vindos. Puede escribir en castellano también, pero puedo responder solamente en Portuñol. Mozhno po-russki, no v nastoyaschii moment tol'ko v translite. You can also email me at yuri{at}freewisdom.org. |
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Please leave your comments. The comments are moderated against link spam and may not appear on the site immediately. Comentários em português são bem-vindos. Puede escribir en castellano también, pero puedo responder solamente en Portuñol. Mozhno po-russki, no v nastoyaschii moment tol'ko v translite. You can also email me at yuri{at}freewisdom.org.