May travels- the second leg - Shanghai

Reaching Shanghai after a 30 hours flight including transit stops all over was a relief. Could get a nice hot shower, plonk onto bed and grab 40 winks to refresh. And that was all I managed - 40 winks betweeen 2.30pm to 4.30pm, despite having slept about 5 hours on the flight over. My bio-clock must be rebelling at the stress that I am putting it through that it is not sure if it is day or night. No worries, I had promised to take a couple of colleagues out for dinner. One was from Santa Clara, California, USA, who came to Shanghai to help deliver a training. The other was one of my subordinates based in Shanghai.

For dinner, we went to Jade Garden in Pudong - generally acceptable food and then the rest of the evening, we went to the bund to take in the sights of Pudong from across the Huangpu river. Did you know that Shanghai is more or less divided by the Huangpu river, resulting in the western part being called Puxi and the Eastern part, Pudong (you know .........xi is west and Dong is East). And that was how Pudong was called what it is!!! Ta da!

I have always tried taking photographs of the scene from the bund over the years but has never been satisfied with the results. It is quite often foggy/misty. And of course in the past, the cameras (both film and digital) were not as advanced as the ones today. I bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ30 end of 2005 and it has served me well. For once, I am quite satisfied with the shots of the Oriental Pearl Tower (Dong Fang Ming Chu), the tallest tower in Asia and the third tallest in the world. As you walk from one end of the bund to the next, the view of the tower changes.

Near the center of the bund, you get to see the tower and the base struts, with the convention center to it's left. This is the same convention center that hosted the APEC meeting a few years ago. As you keep walking to the left of the bund, the convention center becomes the foreground and you end up with a view of 5 spheres - 3 from the tower and 2 from the convention center.
The view from the left end of the bund is also quite good to capture the glitz on the bund side.

Next day, I took my Santa Clara colleague to Yu Yuan Gardens, near the old temple and again, we were there long enough to experience the sights in day and night. The outlines of the buildings were lined with lighted bulbs at night so that in photographing them, the silhouette is striking. Here is a collection of day and night shots of the same buildings.

The first set is of the shops with a Starbucks outlet in the middle for reference.

The second is of the shop with the Chinese name on it.


There were the usual collection of local handicraft stalls to help the tourist to part with their money (willingly). One of the ideas with a low investment outlay was the one they took from Hong Kong. They put a tree in the middle of the the square, put in gold coloured leaves and get tourists (and maybe some locals) to write good wishes on a piece of paper and throw it up the tree. If the good wishes remains in the tree, your wishes will come true. All that for a cheap RMB5 for each wish. Look at this tree - I am sure the person who thought of this idea had a wish to make lots of money with little efforts. It sure looks like is is paying off. I wish that sTupifieD becomes Cleverified soon.

We managed to get a table at the famous Nanxiang steam buns shop (Xiao Long Bau). This place has got to be seen to be believed. At the ground floor, there is a long queue lining up to buy the buns for takeaway. One has to queue for almost half an hour to get the buns, but the people in the queue don't complain. Once they manage to make their purchase, they just sit to the side and wolf down their purchase.

If you want to eat-in, there are tables on the First and Second floor. Here's the catch - to eat-in on the First floor, you need to ensure that you make a minimum purchase of RMB50 to 60 per PERSON. If you want to ensure you have a seat (as the First floor may also be full), you can go to the Second floor and pay a minimum of RMB80 to RMB120 per PERSON. As my colleague in Shanghai say
- Ground Floor is Economy class
- First floor is Business class
- Second floor is First class
Now that is what I call a differentiating factor - same food but different package charges.

Walking around the Yu Yuan Gardens, you have to marvel at the rock collection in the garden, amongst other things. There was also a shop inside the gardens that will rent out Imperial costumes so that one can have one's pictures taken as the Emperor and his family. One lao wai family did just that. So that is what a foreigner looks like if he had been the Emperor of China!! Ha ha!