So, another year, another big trip to Asia. It hadn't been my intent to come back to the Far East so soon. As much as I loved Vietnam and Malaysia in 2010 and my trip with Shane last year (for which I will eventually finish the blog posts), it had meant that my last two major trips had been to Asia. Katy and I had discussed where we'd wanted to go, and Ethiopia was actually the fore-runner. But then Katy got on a training course with her work that involved a week in Shanghai and the opportunity for use both to fly for the cost of her flights alone was too tempting to pass up. So, China it was!
We flew separately, because her course would go for a week before we'd meet up and start our travels. In addition, her company was generous enough to fly her Virgin Atlantic business class; my personal budget was more in the range of "whatever is cheapest on Kayak", which turned out to be a FinnAir flight with a sixteen and a half-hour layover in Helsinki. This sounds like a terrible option, but actually was OK: the stopover was long enough that I got a hostel room for the night, wandered around a rainy Helsinki for a few hours, had some brunch and pottered off back to the airport. Helsinki seems really lovely, and it was a Saturday night and the nightlife seemed really interesting as well; I have bookmarked it as a city to visit again some day.
My outbound flight landed me in Shanghai at about 7:00 in the morning on Monday, after one of the worst flight I've ever had, trapped smack in the middle of a three-family travel group with seven children aged about four through eight. The child next to me, notably, had an amazing ability to spend all flight flailing around and elbowing me in the side every ten minutes. I was also two rows in front of two toddlers, which didn't make things any easier. So I was pretty tired for most of my first day, but determined to soldier on so as not to get badly time-shifted.
I would spend the first two days on my own before meeting Katy, so I tried to cram in as many sights and to-dos as I could, especially ones she'd done before her course started or that I knew wouldn't interest her. So I did a walk along the Bund, the area that abuts the river on the west side and overlooks the stunning ultra-modern business district with its iconic and dominating skyline. I have a deep love of cool modern skyscrapers, so really loved the view, despite the greyness of the day. To me, this skyline alone defines much of the reality of modern China: precious little of it existed as recently as 35 years ago. If you do a Google image search for "Shanghai then and now", you will see the difference and it is striking; surpassed only by the transformation Dubai has undergone in even less time. China's growth, truly is rampant. With the largest population in the world and the second-largest economy, China has embraced growth and capitalism with a fervour you rarely see in communists. Pudong, the business district of Shanghai, is hugely emblematic of this; growth from nothing into one of the world's premier centres of finance in a few decades, shining glass monoliths scraping the sky with more being built, but very little sense of history; everything old being relegated to the far side of the river, isolating the old from the new (and progressively bulldozing the old to make room for more of the new).
We flew separately, because her course would go for a week before we'd meet up and start our travels. In addition, her company was generous enough to fly her Virgin Atlantic business class; my personal budget was more in the range of "whatever is cheapest on Kayak", which turned out to be a FinnAir flight with a sixteen and a half-hour layover in Helsinki. This sounds like a terrible option, but actually was OK: the stopover was long enough that I got a hostel room for the night, wandered around a rainy Helsinki for a few hours, had some brunch and pottered off back to the airport. Helsinki seems really lovely, and it was a Saturday night and the nightlife seemed really interesting as well; I have bookmarked it as a city to visit again some day.
My outbound flight landed me in Shanghai at about 7:00 in the morning on Monday, after one of the worst flight I've ever had, trapped smack in the middle of a three-family travel group with seven children aged about four through eight. The child next to me, notably, had an amazing ability to spend all flight flailing around and elbowing me in the side every ten minutes. I was also two rows in front of two toddlers, which didn't make things any easier. So I was pretty tired for most of my first day, but determined to soldier on so as not to get badly time-shifted.
I would spend the first two days on my own before meeting Katy, so I tried to cram in as many sights and to-dos as I could, especially ones she'd done before her course started or that I knew wouldn't interest her. So I did a walk along the Bund, the area that abuts the river on the west side and overlooks the stunning ultra-modern business district with its iconic and dominating skyline. I have a deep love of cool modern skyscrapers, so really loved the view, despite the greyness of the day. To me, this skyline alone defines much of the reality of modern China: precious little of it existed as recently as 35 years ago. If you do a Google image search for "Shanghai then and now", you will see the difference and it is striking; surpassed only by the transformation Dubai has undergone in even less time. China's growth, truly is rampant. With the largest population in the world and the second-largest economy, China has embraced growth and capitalism with a fervour you rarely see in communists. Pudong, the business district of Shanghai, is hugely emblematic of this; growth from nothing into one of the world's premier centres of finance in a few decades, shining glass monoliths scraping the sky with more being built, but very little sense of history; everything old being relegated to the far side of the river, isolating the old from the new (and progressively bulldozing the old to make room for more of the new).
In addition to the Bund, I had a stroll through a portion of the more-traditional Old Town on my way to the Yuyuan gardens and bazaar. The gardens are a lovely, labyrinthine warren of cultivated trees, traditional buildings and stonework interspersed with bridges, archways and flowers throughout. Thronged with tourists, yet still somewhat peaceful. Walled off from the surrounding areas, this presents a rare glimpse into a sense of yesteryear, albeit a cultivated view originally designed for royalty. The bazaar which surrounds it is a frenetic, bustling warren of shops and restaurants, even more thoroughly thronged with tourists and those who capitalise on them. I am very certain, that had I wished to do so, I could have furnished an entire army with fake Rolexes and handbags.
After getting my fill of the gardens and bazaar, I decided that the soup dumplings I had (much of which ended up on my trouser legs) wasn't nearly enough to sustain me for the day and headed to a Sichuan restaurant for some food. Those who know me well will know of my affinity for spicy food; Sichuan was one of the cuisines I was really looking forward to. And though it wasn't as spicy as I'd anticipated, the chill poached frog certainly was redolent with the numbing effect of the Sichuan pepper. The meat was tender and juicy, though quite a lot of work to eat around the numerous bones.
From there, it was a short walk to People's Square and the Urban Planning Hall, to see the future of Shanghai as the planners dream for it to be. The display was rather interesting, notably the model of the forecast of Shanghai circa 2020, but by this point my long days of travel were starting to catch up to me, so I fear I might not have had quite the learning experience I might have hoped for. I headed back to the hostel to check in properly (I'd gone in the morning just to drop my main bag) and lie down to rest up a little bit.
In the hostel, I ended up meeting and chatting with a few folk also on their travels, and we decided to go out in the evening to take in the views from the WFC, the World Finance Centre, the current tallest building in Shanghai (soon to be supplanted by the creatively-named Shanghai Tower, which is nearing completion). The WFC has viewing galleries at the 94th, 97th and 100th floor; the latter is by far the best, as the lights are turned off throughout the floor, allowing for an amazing view of the city around you. We'd gotten up there with only 20 minutes to spare before the lights turned off; it is interesting to me how many of the city centre's lights are extinguished at night, from 10:00PM onwards. The city genuinely goes quite dark, which stands in rather stark comparison to London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. which are lit up with the brilliance of thousands of neon tubes and bulbs at all hours.
The next day was a more relaxed one. With my compatriots from the hostel, we walked around the Old Town and took in the sights of both more-traditional Chinese living, a more traditional tea house, and some rather run-down, even derelict neighbourhoods that still possessed a certain desolate beauty and intrigue. We then took a cheap cab to the French concession, had a few beers on a nearly-empty roof terrace bar (as you do), and I was finally able to make contact with Katy, and made plans to meet her and her coursemates in Tianzifang, a network of alleys-cum0restaurants and shops, largely aimed at tourists, but not too outlandishly expensive. We had some beers, some food and ended up heading back to Katy's hotel to finish off the night with a few more drinks with her coursemates to allow her to say farewell to those she'd gotten to know rather well in a seemingly very intense week.
And with that, Katy's and my vacation has begun. We were both pretty exhausted, so our day was a relaxed wander. We had some brunch, then went to a tailor where Katy had had some clothes made and needed a few alterations. We took a motorcycle cab to Xiantandi, basically a posh, upscale pedestrianised area, for some beers and food then strolled over to Tianzifang for some dinner (Balinese food). Then an early night at the hostel.
I'm writing this now from our 300kph train en route to Beijing. We have passed further signs of China's voracious growth on our journey: innumerable concrete factories, vast quarries stripped to their core, row after row of brand-new high-rise apartment buildings, many still clad in the wrapping-paper-esque facades of construction netting. Many of these places are seemingly in the middle of nowhere, far removed from the dual centres of Shanghai and Beijing, yet they are seemingly designed to hold millions of individuals. Growth of this sort seems to only go one of two ways: massive, enduring prosperity, or overspending and inevitable collapse. China is the country to watch in the next two decades. For all the bureaucratic inefficiencies and political intransigence, there is a hunger to the nation and its companies that seems to have faded in the west; it's going to be an interesting journey.
Another interesting thing to note: I'm posting this blog entry by emailing it to my father. Because my blog is banned in China as a result of using Google's platform. Though Google's search engine is available in a heavily-censored form, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and much more is also completely filtered without some significant technical workarounds (VPNs and the like). It's fascinating to me to think that this pinnacle of modern commerce, this most significant of trading partners can so heavily work against the most fundamental principles of freedom of speech and association. The power of its economy is great, though, and while I would dearly love to see true liberty come to this area, I suspect that the economic might and the inability of the west to extricate itself from the incomprehensibly large trade with China will render the debate moot. Simply put, China can afford to maintain an open affront to western values of freedom of speech and self-actualisation on this scale because without them, our economies would implode.
More posts to come. Next up: Beijing and the Great Wall!
And with that, Katy's and my vacation has begun. We were both pretty exhausted, so our day was a relaxed wander. We had some brunch, then went to a tailor where Katy had had some clothes made and needed a few alterations. We took a motorcycle cab to Xiantandi, basically a posh, upscale pedestrianised area, for some beers and food then strolled over to Tianzifang for some dinner (Balinese food). Then an early night at the hostel.
I'm writing this now from our 300kph train en route to Beijing. We have passed further signs of China's voracious growth on our journey: innumerable concrete factories, vast quarries stripped to their core, row after row of brand-new high-rise apartment buildings, many still clad in the wrapping-paper-esque facades of construction netting. Many of these places are seemingly in the middle of nowhere, far removed from the dual centres of Shanghai and Beijing, yet they are seemingly designed to hold millions of individuals. Growth of this sort seems to only go one of two ways: massive, enduring prosperity, or overspending and inevitable collapse. China is the country to watch in the next two decades. For all the bureaucratic inefficiencies and political intransigence, there is a hunger to the nation and its companies that seems to have faded in the west; it's going to be an interesting journey.
Another interesting thing to note: I'm posting this blog entry by emailing it to my father. Because my blog is banned in China as a result of using Google's platform. Though Google's search engine is available in a heavily-censored form, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and much more is also completely filtered without some significant technical workarounds (VPNs and the like). It's fascinating to me to think that this pinnacle of modern commerce, this most significant of trading partners can so heavily work against the most fundamental principles of freedom of speech and association. The power of its economy is great, though, and while I would dearly love to see true liberty come to this area, I suspect that the economic might and the inability of the west to extricate itself from the incomprehensibly large trade with China will render the debate moot. Simply put, China can afford to maintain an open affront to western values of freedom of speech and self-actualisation on this scale because without them, our economies would implode.
More posts to come. Next up: Beijing and the Great Wall!
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