Day 2 part 1: Shanghai Museum and the Bund

We were always given a free buffet breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was mostly Chinese dumplings, steamed veggies and fried rice. Most of the hotels also provided cereal, toast and eggs so we also had western food for breakfast. Oh quick note on the concept of being “western”. I had always thought westerners was the way to refer to England and America being we were west of Asia, but the Aussies were just as used to referring to themselves as western, even though they are more or less on the same longitude line as Asia, in no way west of anything significant. Western is clearly a lifestyle description, not related to actual location.

Anyway, after breakfast Ryan and I walked to the 7/11 next door (yes they have those and other similar stores in China) and picked up some water for the day. A bottle of water cost 2yuan, or approximately 30cents. Culture shock of the day: they also sold whine and whisky in that convenience store. It was just a rack like every other one it was just filled with alcohol. Out in the open.

We met with the rest of the group at 9am to begin our daily site seeing. Our first stop was the National Shanghai Museum. It had about twelve different galleries featuring artifacts going back thousands of years. That’s one of the things that fascinates me about China. Coming from America, our notable history only goes back about 300 years. Anything earlier is summed up in Native American history which unfortunately was not well preserved. But in China, they have solid evidence of their history going back over two thousand years! We saw artifacts made from jade, bronze and rock that literally went back almost three thousand years! There were old coins and currency dating back to the time of the Silk Road. They had a model showing how villages used to make clay bricks, a technique that wasn’t just used for a hundred years or so, the villages would go on for hundreds of years, generation after generation. You could study Chinese history for years and still not know everything that went on. 

Outside the Shanghai National Museum

The other fascinating thing was the museum itself. When we walked into the first gallery it was really dark, I thought how are we actually going to see the artifacts? But when I walked up to the display case, suddenly a light from within the glass turned on so we could see the objects. When I walked away the light dimmed again. I thought, what a great way to preserve energy.

Right outside the museum was the People’s Square with the Singing Fountain. It was a small park at the center of the city. The most amusing thing about this part was that on the left there were pigeon coups and you could buy food to feed the pigeons. Pigeons aren’t native to China though, and honestly they don’t have a lot of birds of any kind. They had to import the pigeons from Australia.

Our next stop that day was The Bund. There’s a river that separates the East and West parts of the city, similar to the river in Brisbane. Along the river is a long wall you can walk along, it runs parallel to the old downtown of Shanghai and across the river you have a perfect view of the new downtown (CBD-central business district) As we stood on the lookout facing the new developed area Melody told us that if we had come here 20 years ago that would have been nothing but farming communities. All of the new buildings, bridges, infrastructure is less than 20 years old. It is mind blowing what the Chinese people have managed to accomplish in less than 20 years. Also, an apartment on the river can easily cost about 60 million yuan, about $10 million dollars, for a simple two bedroom.

The Bund in Shanghai overlooking the CBD

There was another building under construction that we were told when it is finished, it will be the new tallest building in Shanghai. Dave, one of the camera happy guys in our group, took a picture of the building. A week later when we returned to Shanghai he took another picture of the construction and in just a few short days that building was already several stories taller.

We were given free time to walk along the Bund and told to be back at 12:30 sharp to go to lunch. The wall along the Bund was decorated with these beautiful yellow and purple flowers, but the weather was hardly above freezing, I wondered how can they keep those flowers alive? They must be fake. So I walked up to get a closer look, they weren’t flowers at all! They were cabbages! What a great idea I thought, it gave the place such a colorful springy look without having to deal with flowers in the winter! Then we saw down by the road a big bronze bull that reminded me of the big bull on Wall Street in New York. I ran down to get a picture and saw the plaque underneath the statue. Turns out it was designed by the same guy who built the New York Bull. Ahha.

I’m very anxious about being on time so we were back at the meeting point by 12:30. Our group headed back to the bus and as Gump was counting our heads he discovered someone was missing! It was our first day, none of us were really familiar with faces yet, and we had already lost someone! Gump ran back to the Bund to try and find our missing person while Melody took the rest of us to lunch. Lunch was on this gorgeous floating restaurant. I was so impressed. I had read a lot of reviews about Wendy Wu before I decided to book with them and 98% of them had been positive but I had read a couple comments about how they had skimped on food sometimes. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. We were taken to fabulous restaurants and always served way more food than we could eat. Everything we were given was delicious and even though we may have always gotten a chicken dish, it was always prepared different and unique. I loved the food on that trip. It wasn’t until after we had finished lunch when Melody got the call that Gump had found our missing lady, Dorothy, who had only been 10 minutes late to the meeting point only to find us all gone!