Tour de Shanghai

The 24 hour train ride from Hong Kong to Shanghai was spent in a “Hard Sleeper Cabin” which means six beds to a room open to the rest of the train. That night Fiona and I learned the Chinese like to yell and smoke cigarettes. But when we got Shanghai we were amazed at the luxury of our room at the classy Metropole Hotel circa 1930 (Photo 1).

The next two days were spent wandering around the vast city which makes Hong Kong look like a quaint tourist town. Shanghai is a city of high fashion and expensive taste although it is actually a real bargain compared to California. The Metro costs about 40 cents to go anywhere and meals usual end up costing about $3.00 per person. It is a great place to take a vacation on a budget.
First thing we did was ride the “Shanghai Transrapid” maglev (photo 2); the fastest train in the world. 431km/hr is by far the fastest I have ever travelled on the ground and it is a little terrifying thinking of what would happen if there was a power outage.

We toured our 3rd Buddhist temple which was a lot like the previous two – lots of people worshiping huge jade and golden deities while choking on wafts of incense smoke (photo 3). The temple was one of the only old artifacts we saw in Shanghai.






The city is experiencing rapid construction development to say the least. Most manhole covers are engraved with a date of completion and walking around for two days I only saw a couple that were predate 2004. Photo 4 shows one group of buildings that were all built in 2008-2009.






As far as I can tell almost all the buildings are designed and built by Japanese or Korean companies. Although the Chinese know how to put up buildings they just can’t seem to figure out how to do the telephone wires! They are like this all over the city (photo 5).




We went up the Shanghai World Financial Center Building (photo 6) which is the third tallest building in the world and has the tallest observation deck in the world.





It was a little cloudy but it was still awesome walking across a glass floor almost half a kilometer in the sky (photo 7).






One last thing to mention was the omnipresent Gumby rip off we found at every corner of the city (photo 8). Shanghai is hosting the 2010 world expo and this merry little guy is the mascot. The event’s motto is “better city, better life” which I believe the people of Shanghai are embracing enthusiastically.