Drinking on the Bund

We spent the morning struggling with more train booking pain. The girl from the hostel returned to let us know that it was possible to book the train we wanted from Suzhou, another place, to Xi'an. Unfortunately she hadn't booked anything, so we told her we would like the ticket that she enquired about, but that meant waiting another day to find out if there were still seats. However, cheered by the fact it was possible to book trains originating somewhere other than your current location, we asked if she could also find out about (and this time also book) the train from Xi'an on to Lanzhou. She wasn't sure, but we couldn't understand why one booking would be possible and not another, but this is China so you never know!

Shanghai is modern after all

A European-looking building

We decided to see a bit of Shanghai and took the metro into the centre. Shanghai, it turned out, was every bit as modern as Beijing, it's just that our hostel was far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western side of town. The centre was full of tall modern buildings, but punctuated by older European-looking buildings which had not been a feature of Beijing. We were heading for the Bund, a street built by European traders when the city was an autonomous settlement immune from Chinese law. The buildings there do look quite oldish European, but across the river is Pudong, which is China's answer to Hong Kong. Apparently the Chinese government plan this to become the most economically active region of the country, so that it's no longer a former colony, but a newly built 100% Chinese venture across the river from an old European concession. Pudong is certainly modern and similar to Hong Kong, but it's not quite the techno-skyline Hong Kong offers, yet. However our view was slightly spoiled by the fact they are reconstructing the walkway on the Bund side of the river, and the works are hidden behind huge adverts all the way along.

Pudong from the Bund

It was our intention to walk all the way down the Bund and into the Old Town district, but I was distracted by a sign sticking out up a side street claiming to be Shanghai's oldest microbrewery. The beer was really quite expensive, but they had a two-for-one offer during the day. But there was a snag: this free drink could not be claimed on the same day; they just gave out vouchers valid from the following day. Sneaky! We had about three each of the nice German style beers. The brewery was only established in the 90s, but I suppose it was probably all state-owned breweries until then.

This character kept us amused while we drank

He was an obviously bored security guard

After we realised how much money we had spent we dragged ourselves back out onto the Bund, where we were almost immediately befriended by Chinese students wanting to practice their English etc., who wanted us to come with them to an acrobatics performance later. They didn't quite seem like the con men we were used to in Beijing, yet I felt instantly very uncomfortable about the whole thing. Near the end of the conversation I discovered that they were Christians. And I thought they had just been harmless con men!

Old Town

We made it down to the Old Town, but our hearts weren't really in it. One of the beers must have been stronger than it tasted. The Old Town looked a bit too reconstructed, but the lots of the buildings were quite pretty; maybe we didn't even make it to the real stuff, I don't know!

Old Town

Back at the hostel, Joanne's increasing antipathy towards Chinese food led us to ask at the hostel for a Western food restaurant. Burgers the girl stated. Fair enough, I suppose. On the way we worked out we'd been directed to a McDonald's and took evasive action; we had eaten once at McDonald's so far, a breakfast muffin, hung over at the airport waiting to leave Japan, and we had no intentions of aid the evil empire any further. We ended up walking into what I can only describe as a greasy chopstick, and failed almost totally to communicate with the staff. We ended up with dumplings and soup. Chinese soup is usually disgusting, consisting of nothing more than MSG-filled stock and bits of bone and gristle. The dumplings looked OK, though. In this case the soup was actually quite nice, just due to the inclusion of large quantities of fresh coriander. The dumplings were, however, just what you'd expect from a greasy chopstick: stuffed with fatty low-quality meat; not very nice.

Food from the greasy chopstick

Back in the hostel we made a decision to cut China short, because Joanne was keen to spend some extra time in New Zealand, which we'd only scheduled eighteen days for. Joanne phoned BA and rescheduled our flight, transferring four days from China to New Zealand.

Seaweed Pringles!

They're green!

written by

The Happy Couple on July 26, 2009 from Shanghai, China

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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