Getting Out of the Well: Strolling through Shanghai

Free breakfast was a fairly simple but tasty start – warm soy milk, fried dough sticks (油條) and steamed buns. For more western tastes, they also had cereal, oatmeal, toast, and milk/orange juice. As in the lobby, the café décor is quite eclectic, including furniture ranging from basic wooden tables and chairs to brightly-patterned couches and giant leather recliner chairs. On the wall, several paintings capture scenes from daily life in Shanghai and some of the surrounding villages – I wonder if the owner or one of the employees did them. There are antique-looking lamps hanging from the wooden-framed ceiling, along with green and red striped swatches of fabric; strings of fabric chili peppers and small LNY lanterns share space with the kind of fake-autumn leaf wreath one could find at any Michaels. Through the intricate paper cut designs on the windows, you can see bamboo growing out in the tiny courtyard. Warm jazz standards are playing, perhaps to enhance the cozy morning ambiance.

Wall of caricature t-shirts

East/West breakfast: some sort of rice mixture, toast and jam, veggie bun, and juice

Best of all (in Susan’s opinion), there’s a café cat!

A cutie, even if he did start attacking the faux-fur collar on Susan’s coat

We spent the morning walking around the Bund area, which was frankly underwhelming because most of the buildings were either shut up (for renovations?), closed for Lunar New Year (so we couldn’t see the “stunning mosaics” in the HSBC building), or they we4re just like the historic buildings in NYC (they all are/were banks, so not surprising). Also, the riverfront views were completely obscured by tall barricades separating the construction from the road, covered in posters for the Shanghai Expo. Consequently, we couldn’t get into Huangpu Park either, except a brief glimpse at the Monument to the People's Heroes (below)

A cool frieze on one of the bank buildings

Custom House (duh)

One of the HSBC lions (not an original one; those are in the museum)

Pudong skyline (view from a bridge near the Russian consulate)

I saw the logo from down the street and was confused why Starbucks was calling itself Cova
(turns out it's a totally different coffee shop, just piggybacking off Starbucks' appearance)

From the Bund, we headed south toward Old Town, the historic Chinese area of Shanghai and a well-known place for food and souvenir shopping. Consequently, however, it was also jam-packed with people, so it became rather difficult to maneuver around all the sidewalk vendors, the occasional food cart, and just the large crowds in general. However, the architecture was gorgeous, and this was one of the few places we saw Macau-like LNY decorations as well =P

Old Town: like Senado, but on steroids

Charm-seller outside a temple

Mao's Little Red Book in multiple languages

Macau-like LNY decorations (sponsored by Pepsi?)

Some lovely paintings for sale

Printing woodblocks...these have got to be antiques!

For lunch, we stopped at the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Shanghai, clearly a place of great local repute as evidenced by the long line outside waiting for steamed vegetable buns, plus the crowds inside waiting for seats and service. Susan and I gave up on finding a place to sit and simply snacked on a couple steamers of tofu dishes while standing up. I know they don’t look that appetizing, but they were actually quite savory.

The restaurant front (can kind of see the crowds inside)

Some of the offerings (I never knew there was black corn!)

Our tofu snacks

While most of Old Town was hustle/bustle, at one point in our wanderings we went down a little side alley and found what felt much more like a slice of old Shanghai. You could still hear firecrackers and crowds around the corner, but down here it was quiet, with just a few elderly people walking around checking their laundry.

A step into the past...

Half motorcycle, half car?

Some unusual, um, laundry

Next, we headed toward People’s Square, where there’s the Shanghai Museum (among others) and a nice park. Unfortunately, the museum was closed by the time we got there, but it’s supposed to have one of the most extensive collections of Chinese artifacts, so it’s definitely worth a visit if you have a day. The outside is shaped like a ding, an ancient bronze vessel – even the character looks vase-like (鼑)

I like the tiled fan pattern

Radisson Tower and Samsung building

Right across from the museum is this big plaza with several cup-like sculptures, and I think the central depressed area was supposed to show a map of Shanghai. About 10 minutes after we got there, an announcement warned of eminent water and the fountain turned on, so I couldn’t get a closer look. There were a lot of families there, and several people were flying kites (one of them looked like Cthulu going to attack the museum heh). From here, you could also see the sun setting behind “Tomorrow Square” (aka Sauron’s Tower in my mind). Across the street from the plaza is the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center (with yet another statue of Haibao).

Little kids playing around

Cthulu attacking the museum?

Or meeting with Sauron?

"Please leave the center area"

One of the stranger surprises in Shanghai: when we went into the underground walkway to cross from the Urban Planning Center to the plaza, we found that it had been “developed” in a model of 1930s Shanghai, complete with antique cars and lampposts. I highly doubt 1930s Shanghai was actually this clean, but it was a cute idea.

Antique trolley car

The "1930s Shanghai" street

Blatantly ignoring the ropes...

From People’s Square, we headed to West Beijing Road for a quick dinner and the Yunfeng Theater acrobatics show. Dinner was at the “Always Café” a short walk away from the MRT stop, which came recommended by Lonely Planet . The food was kind of expensive but pretty good: I was craving something not-Chinese, so I just got a veggie quesadilla, which came piping-hot with sour cream and fresh salsa on the side.

Yum.

Finding the acrobatics theater was a little tricksy because we had to go down this dark side street that opened into a huge parking lot with lots of tour buses, so we figured we were in the right place. Our cheap seats (150 RMB, booked through our hostel) were all the way at the back and to the side, but the floor was sloped and there were two huge screens on either side of the stage, so we could still easily see what was happening.

The acrobatics show was alternately awe-inspiring and disturbing. It’s not like Cirque de Soleil where you know there are things like wires and nets to ensure the performers’ safety: this was the real deal. If someone fell in one of these aerial acts, they’d have at least a concussion, if not something more serious, and I’m sure the performers have had injuries in their training. The future doctor in me cringed at the thought of the arthritis/tendonitis/other musculoskeletal problems they probably have or will in the future. Susan also pointed out that most of these acrobats probably had no other form of education or training, so their post-performing job options were severely limited. Some girls also looked far too young to be on stage, much less doing mid-air splits on one hand.

Still, there was a lot to be appreciated in the show. Many acts were more about skill and teamwork than flexibility, like spinning plates, juggling hats, or piling 10 girls on to one bike. Ending with the “motorcycle ball of death” was more than a little hokey (they gradually added one rider at a time until there were 5 inside the sphere, the last one emphatically being a “Miss” instead of a “Mr.____” heh), but it was still impressive. I’ll leave you readers to form your own opinions from some of the photos below (eventually there might be video clips).