It’s no joke when you keep turning the corner to find a basset hound staring at you. I’m pretty sure that this was Mason working as a secret service basset in Shanghai. Watching over our every move. To see whether we were buying sufficient treats to take home for him. He’s going to be sorely disappointed!
Having set off to the other side of the world I was unsure how I would manage to keep up my blogging. I need not have worried too much really. With my trust IT support person with me it’s been easy to resolve any unforeseen issues. Right now I am blogging using my laptop connected to my mobile phone via bluetooth and although the speeds are much slower than usual I’m still able to carry on blogging. How clever is that?
Chinese parks are a community hub. People come together to talk in the shade of the trees, to exercise, to dance, to watch movies and to write. It’s a wonderful thing to see people milling around enjoying the company and the location. Although parks are often located to busy roads they have a tranquility about them which is a welcome relief to the hustle and bustle of city life.
Strolling around the parks was a total pleasure for us. Perfect for a spot of people watching and light relief from the sweltering heat. I was particularly fascinated by the men writing in water on the ground. I have no idea what they were writing but it was of great interest to other people who hung around to read as they wrote.
For all the historical references that remain in Shanghai there were many traditional Chinese historical treasures that did not survive the Cultural Revolution. A little like the main historical sites like the Forbidden City and Summer Palace in Bejing some of the historical places in Shanghai have been rebuilt for posterity rather than you being able to experience the real thing.
I am however fascinated by the traditional Chinese architecture. The wavy tiled roofs. The ornate carvings to ward off evil spirits. These evoke an exotic feel and bring a sense of the Chinese culture to buildings that are simply not achieved in this modern time.
Streets all around Shanghai are being repaved, or re-cobbled or re-bricked. This is all part of the spruce up effort for the expo. At the end I’m sure Shanghai will have some of the smartest pavements around. There seems to be a huge effort to conserve and preserve some of the most traditional parts of Shanghai.A willingness to keep the local venacular intact.
You’ve got to admire the Chinese for their enterprising spirit. They are determined to make their City attractive to live and visit. I read something on my wanderings about how they are trying to create something for everyone. Something that nurtures the nostalgia for the elderly, something trendy to attract the young, something Chinese for the visitors and something foreign for the Chinese. If that’s their goal then they are bang on target in lots of respects.
Shanghai seems like a million miles and lifetimes ago. Blogging about our adventures keeps the memories alive which is good because right now I’m living life like an out of body experience. The jet lag has kicked in big time making it hard to sleep at the appropriate times of day and even harder to process information when I am awake.
The good news is that our luggage has been found and will be delivered to us in London. We’ve adjusted our planned itinerary to account for the day we missed whilst stuck in Shanghai and allow our baggage to catch us up. Having done the emergency shopping, sorted out travel plans and know we’ll be reunited with out possessions, I finally feel like I can start relaxing into the UK part of our trip.
Right now I’m trying to make sense of the differences in place and life between New Zealand, China and the UK.
After what seems to be an age we arrived in London safe and sound. Just the small matter of having no luggage right now but I live in hope that the global baggage tracking system won’t let us down.
International air travel is like a parallel universe where time gets confused and your body subjected to forces and food outside of it’s normal rhythm. Most of all you are subjected to a compulsory workout by walking miles and miles along nondescript corridors complete with resistance training as you lug along a heavy weight of immediate personal possessions.
For all the high tech options for transport in Shanghai its the low tech modes of transport that seem to still keep the city moving.
It would have been nice to have more time in Shanghai. So we did. Not by choice though. The cargo doors on our plane refused to close so after several hours sitting on the plane we were decamped to a hotel for the night.
We’re now waiting to catch another flight with another airline to be homeland bound. The only positive is that we’ve been upgraded so hopefully will enjoy a little more comfort. The downside is heaven knows when we will be reunited with our luggage which continues to languish on this plane.
After foot slogging around for a while it’s always nice to find a shady spot to glug back a bottle of cold water. This park was the perfect place for us to rest our weary legs. Just like the buildings in Shanghai the parks are being spruced up for the Expo.
I love people watching at the best of times and there were plenty of people to watch her in Shanghai. There are always people bustling around on bikes, trikes and other motorised vehicles. There are construction labourers all over the place. The park was no different.
I wished I’d become an architect. I desperately want to understand how people make buildings like these. How you piece together developments on an uber scale and what makes an architect create buildings like these. If I could make sense of the fundamentals I think I’d make more sense of Pudong.
This is Shanghai at it’s most audacious, most modern, most 21st century Chinese. There is no kiwi tall poppy syndrome here. China is saying we’re big, we’re better, we’ve got big ideas. Today I saw bigger and taller in gargantuan proportions. Even the word looks and sounds a little Chinese – gar-gan-tuan!
Shanghai has been an economic powerhouse of China for hundreds of years. First as a trading port and now as the financial hub of the world’s economic hothouse. Right now there are feverish preparations across the city to showcase Shanghai’s economic might at the World Expo in 2010. My sense is that this trumps the Beijing Olympic Games by a mile.
Streets are being repaved, people are being encouraged to clean up shops, homes and businesses, old buildings are being refurbished and entirely new buildings are being constructed. Showing off Shanghai seems to have become an obession and a symbol of international pride.
