Shanghai-ed!!

It's been a really busy month for me, mainly because it was my mother's 60th birthday a few weeks ago and she requested a family holiday as a birthday present, so we all decided to go to Shanghai.

I spent 2 days in Singapore before taking a flight from there to Shanghai. I had to squeeze a lot into those 2 days and they went by in a blur. I had to: get a haircut (and spa perm! see my curly hair?), catch up with old friends, visit relatives, fix a chipped tooth, and attend a birthday lunch for my mother. This is us in the picture below, very, very full from an ala-carte buffet lunch at Kippo Restaurant at Keppel Club, Singapore. Kippo has a range of gourmet Chinese and Japanese food. The highlights of our lunch were salmon sashimi, codfish marinated with miso paste (mmm the fish melted in your mouth), double-boiled sharkfin soup, and a range of delicious dim sum dishes. The cake was chocolate mud - yum yum! Unfortunately, I could only manage a mouthful or two as I'd filled up on herbal jelly dessert (it's hard to find it in Melbourne. I would appreciate if someone could tell me where I can get it here.)

We took a midnight flight to Shanghai, and as I'd spent most of the evening with my friends, I had to pretty much rush to the airport without a shower. I don't think I arrived smelling like roses! We flew with China Eastern (I think) and the flight was terrible. The other passengers were loud and creepy (I exchanged seats with my dad because they were getting drunk and making me uncomfortable). I slept through breakfast but was told that they had served fried beehoon on board.

Stepping off the plane, we had to maneouvre our stiff legs down a steep flight of aluminium steps to a waiting shuttle bus that would take us to the airport. It was summer and the heat and smog hit us like a tidal wave. I thought the heat in Singapore was bad, but in Shanghai, the smog hangs about the air, making the heat feel ten times more oppressive. I started to perspire a few seconds after I got off the plane. By the way, I strongly recommend Nivea compact spray - it saved me from becoming a smelly, drippy mess in Shanghai!

At the airport, we went through customs relatively quickly and waited for about half an hour for my sister to arrive. She had flown with Singapore Airlines, and it sounded like she had had a more comfortable flight than we did!

Once we collected all of our baggage, we met our tour guide who ushered us into a surprisingly clean and air-conditioned (phew!) bus. He was nice and friendly, with a good sense of humour, but the funniest part was watching my father try to communicate with him in his extremely bad Mandarin. My spoken Mandarin isn't the best either, but I can understand most of it, if it isn't spoken too quickly.

A picture of the Shanghai skyline, made blurry by the perpetual smog that hangs over the city.
A view of the skyscrapers rising like glaciers among the old French-colonial buildings that have been preserved with great care by the Chinese government. I wonder if this is out of respect for the incredible architecture or out of sentiment for the yesteryear. In either case, the contrast is quite striking. Indeed, Shanghai is a melting pot of old and new, and everything appears to coexisit in harmony. Our tour guide told us that the city is divided into 'dong' and 'xi' (east and west), with the older generation living on one side and the younger generation migrating to the other in search of their future.
Another family shot! This was taken in a commemorative garden, however I can't really remember what it was for! Hopefully my sister does, and she can englighten me :) By the way, I must apologise that my pictures aren't in chronological order. I resized them in photoshop and saved them into a folder and the stupid computer arranged them in alphabetical order. Because I give my photos silly names, I had a hard time remembering what was what...
Wow! A Haagen Dazs in "Shanghai Old Street" on Fangband Road. This huge area has buildings designed to look like residences of the late Qing dynasty. It's filled with little teahouses, dessert shops, clothing retailers, souvenir and curio shops and literally everything you could want - including Haagen Dazs ice-cream! We escaped the heat and ducked into a dessert shop that sold icy-fruity desserts like frozen mango with sago, or watermelon and honeydew pulp. I was amazed at how hygenic it was. The waitress used a napkin to take a spoon out of a box for me! The service was also impeccable here. They refunded me part of the cost of my dessert because strawberries were out of season.
This was the meal I had at a Japanese restaurant we found at one of the big shopping malls. It was quite late when we went in, and by the time we finished, it was around 11pm, but the staff were very polite and didn't rush us through our meal. I ordered Korean style seafood rice. It was basically Japanese rice topped with spicy Korean broth and seafood. A bit too spicy for my tastes, but very tasty, with bits of mussels, fish and calamari.
This picture was actually taken in Singapore, before we left for Shanghai. My sis had kindly taken us to a fancy Japanese restaurant at Great World City. They did nouveau Japanese food. She ordered some sort of mille feuille, I think. It was delicious, with the flavours of fish and potato mingling with the salsa on the side. I had ordered king prawn with sea urchin roe. MMm.. can't get enough of sea urchin roe.
This is the famous Nanjing Road, one of the most important commercial and tourist streets in Shanghai. It reminded me of a cross between New York and Hongkong.
My first meal in Shanghai. It was awful. It was chicken and mushroom noodles, but it tasted like the chicken and mushroom had come out of a tin, and even though the noodles were hot, the chicken was cold. Very bland and unappetising, but it only cost about S$1.
Huahai Road. This part definitely reminds me of Orchard Road in Singapore. I spied a beautiful pair of handmade leather kitten heels here, but unfortunately, the budget didn't stretch to accommodate it. Sob!
THe Oriental Pearl TV tower. It's 468m high and consists of 15 spheres of different sizes. It's supposed to resemble pearls dropping onto a jade plate. Hahahaha. Sorry, but with all the multi-coloured lights, it looks more like a Star Trek prop. Now, China has the biggest population in the world. (I think... or is it India?) And of course, every single person in China had to congregate at the Pearl tower the night we decided to go there!! Either that, or it's a common outing for Shanghainese families. "What are we going to do this weekend, ma?" "Go to the Pearl tower, of course!" "Awww, again?!"

It was so crowded, we had to stand in line every step of the way, that by the time we got to the highest part (the "space module"- see what I mean about Star Trek?) I was too annoyed to enjoy the view. It *was* amazing to see the megawatts of lights twinkling on the bay, though.

A picture of the lobby of our hotel. I don't know why I took it. I think I was delirious from dire need to take a shower.
As I was getting dressed, I noticed that this was the brand name of my skirt. 'Anemia'. I guess you have to be anaemic to get into Singapore clothing sizes.
A picture of a roadside snack shop. I wasn't brave enough to try any of the food though.
A picture of the memorial thingy mentioned below our family picture. I think it was erected (teeheehee) to commemorate the deaths that fell to communism... I could be entirely wrong, though. I named this picture 'spike', so it doesn't tell me a whole lot.
Another picture of the 'spike'. Extremely phallic, no?
A picture of a nice looking tea house in one of the gardens.
Another picture of some of the buildings in "Shanghai Old Street".
Yet another picture of a building in "Shanghai Old Street". The girl in blue looks really bored.
And yet another picture of "Shanghai Old Street". I was fascinated by all the new-old buildings. I found some nice souvenirs here - some watercolour paintings, a silk-embroidery cat that reminds me of Kez, a silk bag, some painted fabric fans.
The view from the Pearl tower.



More pictures of the view from Pearl tower, and pictures of wax figures in the Old SHanghai museum on the ground floor of the Pearl tower.

Unfortunately, on our second-last night in Shanghai, my sister got a very serious case of food poisoning. We think it was from a dessert shop we went to that night. It was a very scary strain of food poisoning because it attacks the lining of your intestines. Anyway, thank goodness she's feeling much better now.

Thus concludes Shanghai Part 1. I still have a few random food and scenery shots to put up, but may skip them and put up pictures from my weekend in Melbourne city instead :)