Shanghai: highlights roundup

Every morning in Shanghai, I'd be up around 6am with the jet lag the newly risen sun. I'd quietly dress and slip out the door as quickly as I could, strolling through the hotel lobby and out the door to the morning streets of Shanghai before the crowds of tourists. It's a different place, even the Bund, in the early morning. There are large groups of elderly walking, and doing group tai chi exercise on the Bund, some even with traditional wushu weapons. There were a large number of gentlemen flying kites too, high above the river. I walk along, several blocks past the hotel to the narrow but bustling market street. At 7am, its packed. Parents walking little kids to school, older kids going to school, workers of all kinds going to work, and everyone is grabbing a bite to eat for breakfast. I sampled as much as I could from the various carts, stalls, and small restaurants along the street.




Two to three steamed buns with pork filling, also called baozi, hot corn juice, which tastes exactly how it sounds, pork fried rice with egg and green peppers, and even what I called a Shanghai crepe, which seemed to be a very popular option. There's a big round frying plate, about the same size as the crepe makers in France have, and they ladle on a batter, spoon it around until its very thin and flexible, and then scramble an egg or two on top of it, followed by two sticks of crunchy fried dough, a ladle of a spicy sauce, and large sprinkling of green peppers, and then the whole thing is folded up in the crepe. Pretty good stuff.

Walking Nanjing road to the Bund at night is a totally different experience. You come up from the metro stop into the cool night air filled with neon and people. Shanghai moves so fast and with so much energy you get swept up in it. On East Nanjing road, one is constantly accosted for watches, clothes, girls. But you brush them off, and more turn up, one after another, and you take it in stride- after all, they're the chorus line of East Nanjing Road. The push of the people, the bounding music from the stores on either side, the tourist shops, the knockoff clothing shops, the high end boutiques all rub shoulders on this street which one classmate called "ten blocks of Times Square." There's a thrum of life here, the tourists, foreign and Chinese, excited to see Nanjing road, the Bund and the lights of Pudong across the river, and the locals, excited to see the tourists and the money and attention they're bringing. Once across the boulevard, you climb the steps up to the bund, and you're awash in the electric lights of Pudong, and the thousands of people who are taking bad flash photos of themselves in front of it.

City god temple, part of the Yu Yuan gardens complex, was an old temple in the heart of the old Chinese city downriver from the Bund. The wood is still laquered red with the upturned eaves and tiled roof, but it is now a temple to Commerce and Tourism. The streets leading to it are lined with tourist crap souvenirs, and the place itself is nothing more than a beautiful and historic mall. Dairy Queen and Starbucks take center stage, alongside the cafes and restaurants famous for their steamed dumplings. In the center courtyards, tourists from all over China and all over the world jostle with monks, shopkeepers, performers. Our student guides, friends of one of our Chinese students here, are convinced to take an older gentleman up on an offer to see a rooftop terrace. We're suspicious and on our guard, but the two girls leading us around seem comfortable. We file into the small store where you can have your picture taken with a rickshaw against an 'old' backdrop. "I wonder what they're going to sell us" we mutter, crammed into the tiny elevator.

It turns out to be the suggestion that we stop into their pearl store at the top, where we get out, and the invitation to try their tea house. We decline and check out the terrace. It's a great view of the temple and the city surrounding, and the huge towers of Pudong loom in grey silhouettes in the grey late afternoon.