We arrived in Shanghai in the evening and drove in a taxi
into the city. I felt like I was in a movie driving through this big city with
bright lights everywhere.
Our apartment was amazing!!! It
had a view of the Bund, a view of the second tallest building in the world (the
Shanghai Tower
The city is very big though with
a population of twenty two million people. We stayed in the centre so we only
experienced life at the heart of the city.
When we arrived in the evening,
the city was surrounded in a cloudy mist and most of the tallest buildings were
out of sight in the clouds! The next morning we walked along the shopping
street towards the famous Bund. It was raining a little and when we got there
we realised the buildings could not be seen at all because of the mist! So we
decided to go to the Shanghai
museum to get out of the rain and hope for the best…that the mist would clear
by the afternoon!
The museum was very interesting.
Everything was about Chinese culture and history. The museum even had an
exhibition on Chinese minorities which was very interesting! I visited Yangshuo
and learnt a lot about Chinese minorities. I will talk more on this subject in
my next blog post!
In the afternoon, the sky cleared
a little luckily and we got some pictures with the famous skyline in the
background! It’s a nice palace to walk although there can be far too many
people as usual! People fight their way to have some pictures in the first spot
they see after walking up the stairs. Walk away from the crowds and you can
still get some good photos but with far less people!
My family were confused at the
fact that Chinese people were asking for photos with us. They were even more
confused at the fact that a Chinese man asked if his wife could take photos of
me and him together! In the UK ,
if a man would ask his wife to take a picture of him with a young foreign girl,
he would get a punch in the face from her! This wasn’t the first time a man had
asked his wife/girlfriend to take a picture of him with me either! How odd!
There are many nightclubs in Shanghai but as I was
with my family, we only went to some restaurants and bars. I saved the partying
for when I went to Thailand !
There’s a very cheap bar called Abbey
Road . It’s clearly dedicated to the Beatles. It
was my mum’s ideal bar! We also went to this all you can eat buffet. At the
beginning we were unsure about eating there as it was expensive. But as soon as
they mentioned that wine was included in the deal, we were sold! An all you can
eat and all you can drink buffet would never go down well in the UK ! People
would definitely abuse the restaurant!!
We went to the Yuyuan Garden Shanghai !
In Chinese gardens, there are always giant fish and turtles. The turtles are a
symbol of longevity and fish are a symbol of wealth.
We went to the top of the sixth
tallest building in the world, the Shanghai
World Financial
Center
I also recommend seeing the Bund
at night. The skyline is very impressive!! I thought the city would be in
flashing lights all night long but surprisingly, they turn off many of the
lights after a certain time! So the city isn’t as energy wasting as I assumed!
I feel like I should say that my
favourite place that I visited in China should be some traditional
and cultural Chinese town. However, I was very impressed by Shanghai . I do feel that making parts of China more
Western destroys the originality of the country. At the same time, I’ve never
felt so relaxed since being in China !
It’s very Western but at the same time it has its traditional gardens and the
taxi drivers don’t speak English, like in any other city in China ! I always
feel safe in China , even in Zhengzhou . In Shanghai , there are cameras and patrols everywhere, so I’m
guessing Shanghai is probably one of the safest
areas in China !
Next stop was…Yangshuo…
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