Tourists in our own town...still

One Sunday back in March Trent and I met up with our friends Todd and Rebecca for brunch at Taikang Lu, which is a major tourist area and one of the last remaining truly "old" areas in Shanghai. You can check out Todd and Rebecca's musings on their awesome blog Knee How Shanghai. We were smart and got there early so there were no crowds just some locals hanging out and doing awesome things like kissing their pet birds. We browsed around some shops because the place we wanted to eat brunch wasn't open yet, and that is when someone thought they had a celebrity sighting. Really it was just Rebecca. Even though we live in a city of 24 million people, for some Chinese people it is still exciting to see foreigners, and not just any foreigners blonde foreigners. Luckily, if Trent and I head to the Bund we get the same treatment and I can only imagine how many vacation photos we have ended up in. Secretly, I imagine that we end up in their family newsletter and Christmas Cards but that's just silly. After brunch we headed over to the Yu Yuan Garden area and went to a bird/pet market which was mostly cool and a little depressing. Then we went to the "antique" street which had an amazing amount of mostly crap. A lot of it was cool, but totally overpriced. Most of it was new made to look old and then there were the thousands of statues of Mao. I bought a small wooden jewelry box and I am still thinking about purchasing some statues I'll go back again I'm sure! We rounded out our day with a trip to the Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party near Xintiandi. Xintiandi is the fancy part of Shanghai that is made to look old but is really brand new. The museum is free and they frequently have different exhibits on display, when we were there they had an exhibit solely on the life of Zhou Enlai the first Premier of the PRC from 1949-1976 when he died. You're not allowed to take any pictures inside of the museum but I did manage to sneak one in the courtyard between buildings. 

Our first official visitor!

All the way back in December we had our very first house guest all the way from, well, Hong Kong, but Hong Kong via the US/India/all over! My dear friend Meg came and stayed with us for almost two whole weeks and in spite of having to work most of the time we had some amazing adventures. Somehow, having Meg around always brings me some good luck. In this instance I got the call for a job interview while she was here, that ended up in me switching from teaching which I was struggling with to working in marketing and communications at an international school which I am really enjoying! We decided to give ourselves a local makeover by sporting glasses without lenses and super adorable face masks with bunnies on them. As you will see in the photo below, we look great and it is an obvious improvement.

We traveled all around Shanghai, heading to the pearl market, the fake market, the Hotel Thing Confluence, and the bird and flower market. We also had a pretty much failed attempt at heading to a crane sanctuary in Changshu, which is North of Shanghai. We had discussed heading away for a day trip and since I am still relatively new to China and speak basically no Chinese, I wasn't really sure how to go about planning such a trip. So I turned to one of the many expat magazines whose cover story for that week was 7 Best Day Trips out of Shanghai. Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. NEVER trust one of these magazines for day trip advice. I'll liberally quote the author as saying something to the effect of "Just head to the South Railway Station, buy a ticket, hop on the bus and in less than 90 minutes you'll arrive in Changshu. Grab a cab out to the sanctuary enjoy pine tree forests shooting out of the water while being paddled around in a Chinese gondola. When you're finished grab a cab or pedicab back to the bus station and head back to Shanghai." Wow! It's just that easy?? No. Way.

We should have taken our first clue that this was not meant to be when we were on Line 3 and watched a small child repeatedly refuse a cookie from her mother and then hop off of the seat and squat down to poop in the middle of the train floor. I will take multiple transfers as a result just to avoid said Line 3 after that incident.

Then when we arrived in Changshu, over two hours later on a bus where another small child needed to go to the bathroom. This time, her mother provided her with a bucket to use in the rear of the bus. That didn't seem to resolve the problem as she proceeded to whine-cry the remaining 45 minutes of the bus ride. Catching a cab was no problem, but due to the length of the bus ride we were running behind schedule and discovered that there were no cabs or pedicabs just hanging around the sanctuary waiting to bring us back to the bus station. We didn't get to see the cranes or the chinese gondolas because the next 30+ minutes were spent trying to get the employees of the sanctuary to call a cab for us. They refused and put us on a local bus back to the center of town, where we proceeded to stand around waiting for our return bus to Shanghai which then took almost 3 hours. Trent was kind enough to later point out, that we should not have left from the South Long Distance Bus Station since we were in fact heading North. In retrospect, the experience is quite funny and a story that my mom has since relayed to many people who then request I tell it in person which I oblige. Since this failed attempt at a day trip I have successfully visited two other cities via car and train, with friends that I happily entrusted to plan entirely. And tomorrow we're heading to Hangzhou which I am really looking forward to!

Meg will hopefully be visiting again soon as it looks like her plans will bring her back to Hong Kong in the fall. I may also get to host her lovely parents in the fall during a trip to China that they are in the process of planning. Trent and I also hope to get over to HK and go surfing with Meg and Tom and the rest of the crew they work with.

Longhua Temple

Since we decided to stay in Shanghai for the holiday, I asked my colleagues where their favorite places to go in the city were, and Melina, my colleague from the Netherlands recommended the Longhua Temple. We found it one cool, breezy day with little trouble at all and I can definitely understand why she loves going there.

Longhua Temple was really beautiful, and it is one of the oldest places in Shanghai that has been preserved. It has been built and rebuilt for hundreds of years but the construction and space have really been preserved quite nicely. We accidentally snuck into the temple with a German tourist group, bad karma I know (see the photo of white people near the gate below). It was sort of an experiment because we were both taking pictures of the really tall pagoda that you also will see below, and I saw people paying for tickets and then I saw the Germans going in and I said quick Trent, I think you have to pay but lets see if they'll say anything. The guards didn't even notice, so it wasn't all that exciting but it was funny to pretend to be part of the group.

Being in the Temple was a really wonderful experience from the break in the weather, which at that point in the first week of October, was the first time we had really had relief from the humidity and the high 80s to 90 degree temperatures. The smell of the incense burning everywhere and the smoke from incense really made a lasting impression. It was such a relief to be in a relatively quiet place, and a welcome contrast to the excessive Holiday crowds literally everywhere else we went. They also had temple cats that I OF COURSE fell in love with, especially the scrawny little one with one green eye and one blue eye that came right up to me and was talking to me in between some really amusing attempts to "hunt birds."

After going to the temple we wandered around the corner and discovered the Longhua Park of Revelutionary Martyrs, according to a quick Google search:

"The park is on a site of mass execution. The Kuomintang carried out a purge of suspected Communists here in 1929 – a long, underground tunnel will lead you to the exact place where the remains of many victims were found and to the jail where prisoners were held. Less morbid, and more interesting, are the excellent, massive Soviet-realist sculptures that dot the grounds." 


Unfortunately, Trent and I didn't do this quick Google search before discovering the park, so we didn't go into the underground tunnel or the museum that is also on the grounds. It just means a return trip is in order!

Upon entering the park, I did however get in trouble. I was trying to sneak up on some men doing Tai Chi in the park to take a photograph, the particular stretch of grass I used to approach my subjects was apparently off limits. I was completely unaware until Trent called my name out to which I was going to turn around and say, "Shhh, I'll be right back" but instead was met with the sight of a small Chinese guard furiously waving his finger at me. I quickly got off the grass feeling quite embarrassed and especially guilty because I had been trying to sneak a picture. But, we didn't let that incident get in our way and wandered through the park and enjoyed the day. The park is quite beautiful, and the history behind it helps me understand the layout and the monuments a little better than I did the day we were there.