What Shanghai Has To Offer ?

Thursday 24 August

We were treated to a long lie in this morning as the coach didn’t leave until 10.00. We were on the move again, this time to stay in Shanghai city, about 2 hours away. We retraced our steps along the A20 but this time in daylight. The low buildings of Souzhou soon changed to higher six storey buildings, which became ten and twelve storeys as we got nearer to the city. Most of this was new development, and much of it quite smart, with red roofs and white walls, looking a lot like our town houses, but twice or three times as tall. Here there was still some agriculture, mainly vegetables, on small plots between the housing estates. But for the last twenty or thirty miles into the city centre, the area became more industrial and the quality of the buildings deteriorated – they were grey and flat and very dirty and the number of storeys went up to twenty storeys and more.

Once in Shanghai city itself it is like Manhattan – all skyscrapers – each trying to be more exotic than its neighbour. There are many weird and wonderful designs – some just the tops of the very tall buildings, but some are curved and bendy, others have chunks cut out of the sides and look very unstable. The impression is of glass not concrete. Most of these are either financial empires or hotels. Tomorrow we are going to dinner at the top of the fourth tallest building in the world – a hotel, of course, but the view should be terrific at night, when its all lit up.

Our first stop in Shanghai was to see a jade Buddha. On entering the temple you are immediately in a large courtyard, with large, typical temple buildings on each side. The centre is taken up by two huge braziers where loads of Chinese people are lighting their incense sticks, not one at a time, but large clusters, which look like a smoking bunches of flowers – and the smell is overwhelming. The large jade sitting Buddha is upstairs in a square room that everyone files through. It is very dark, lit only by a few candles around the actual statue, and guards patrol to ensure you don’t take any piccys. The Buddha was brought from India by a wealthy lord in the 1800’s – he actually brought five statues – another of which is in another room here, which is much smaller and reclining – but the other three were lost. Hundreds of Chinese were praying in the temples where there were more usual huge golden Buddhas, and a little man with his dustpan and brush was going around sweeping up the coins in front of the statues.

Lunch was in a restaurant at the Shanghai Embroidery Co. Displayed around the wall were “paintings” that turned out to be superb embroidery. There were many typical Chinese designs – junks on waterways, dragons, peony flower arrangements – as well as some copies of classic works of art, such as the Mona Lisa, The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, and Sunflowers by Van Gogh. We all scrambled through lunch so that we had enough time to browse – many of our group bartered and bought piccys. I had left my credit card locked in my case on the coach, so I took it as a sign I was not meant to buy. Our guide, Jasmine – who has not got an obvious sense of humour - was very worried by this time about overweight cases, although the largest of the purchases were being shipped.

Next we were taken to the Shanghai museum. This is an impressive large modern building with a glass cupola and escalators and stairs on either side of a large central square. Exhibited here are many of the old Chinese artifacts.

We looked at:

the Jade Hall – mainly small pieces of very intricately carved jade in all colours dating back to between 2,500BC and the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. The objects ranged from small buttons and decorations for clothes, to larger household items such as bowls and vases, to even larger weapons, such as halberds.

the Chinese Seals Hall – these are mostly stamps bearing individual signatures, again dating from earliest times and varying in size from the that of a pinhead to the size of your hand. The most interesting feature was the parts you hold – decorative jade animals and even whole scenes from their history carved around a central handle, to bronze and gold figurines. When the Chinese put seals on documents and paintings they have to balance each other – ie they will not put just one on a page, there must be a pair and one side must match the other – all to do with ying and yang – or it will be unlucky.

the Calligraphy Hall – this contained many old manuscripts showing the development of Chinese writing through the dynasties – they only use about 4,000 symbols today (out of 40,000 as set out in the old manuscripts) – there’s a different symbol for each word, which children learn to read around the ages of 3-4 years of age. If there isn’t a symbol for the word they want, they use the phonetic sounds to make up the symbol. They have four different tones for each word and therefore the same word can have four different meanings, ie: Mummy, happy, tired and field, which all have the same symbol, but different soundings according to the intonation. When using a computer they spell the word phonetically and use our keyboard, and like prescriptive text, choose the word they need. Apparently it is quite easy for Chinese people to learn English, but not at all easy for us to master Chinese.

the Chinese Painting Hall – again depicting paintings retrieved from the earliest settlers through to the Ming dynasty. The style of painting does not appear to have changed hardly at all over the centuries – Chinese scenes including water, trees and mountains, flowers and birds, or fabulous animals, such as the dragon and the phoenix – just different techniques to apply the ink and paint to the paper.

We ran out of time after this as the coach was waiting to deposit us at the Hotel – a Best Western in the north-east section of the city. The actual hotel is OK – just about – for a 4*, but the staff are distinctly unfriendly – they definitely do not like groups. One of our families was sitting at the edge of the bar area, waiting to go out in evening and they were told to move or buy a drink. Service was extremely slow in the bar and we nearly had to leave before our drinks arrived, and when they did, they would not accept payment on the room tab, but insisted on cash! The cocktails were very poor anyway.

Tonight’s entertainment was an Acrobatic Show. It was a wonderful circus experience, with unbelievable balancing acts – of course many of the girls are contortionists, but it still surprises you at how they can bend and move their bodies into positions that make your eyes water, whilst balancing lighted candelabra on feet, hands, mouth and forehead all at once. We also saw amazing tumbling, juggling acts with balls, skittles and badminton racquets, magic and illusion acts, and flying acts using long swathes of silk – this was similar to what we saw in Xian, but even more electrifying as both the girl and the man were at some times being held by just an ankle or a wrist as they flew around the stage, up and down – and at one time they were just foot to foot! But the loudest applause probably went to the spoof knife throwing act, with a member of the audience as the target! The children loved it and the audience gasped and laughed and clapped like mad. It was a very colourful and professional spectacular which we all thoroughly enjoyed.

Once outside we were taken to the French Concession area of Shanghai – a small street, with 18th century French architecture, consisting mainly of bars, boutiques and restaurants where you can eat European style – it reminded me a lot of Covent Garden. We were left to find ourselves some dinner and get back to the hotel. We went along with Dave and Sue, and Dave was desperate for something English (he couldn’t wait another couple of days till he was home) so we found a cosmopolitan restaurant (La Luna) serving burgers and chips and onion rings. I was the only one not having a burger, I had a house salad with avocado and prawns (delicious), but I still had chips and onion rings too. The bill came to 800 yuan with a tip – over three times the night before, with half the number of people, but the food was really delicious, the loos clean and the atmosphere great – there was a live band singing rock and roll. It was really worth it.

We managed to get a cab to take us back to the hotel – despite what Jasmine had told us, the taxi drivers are not ‘au fait’ with where all the different hotels are, out of the city centre and our driver spent a few minutes checking our destination. But perhaps he was just play-acting - Jasmine had told us the journey baack to the hotel would cost 30 yuan max, but we were charged 54 – I definitely think he saw us coming! But it didn’t spoil our evening one bit – we just had a laugh and put it down to experience. For the first time since leaving home the blog had to wait till the following day to be written up. I was just too tired.