Shanghai - Day 3
Time to see something more real today. We're off to the Hongkou district; a fairly unassuming residential area of Shanghai but with some cool history and hopefully a more local feel.
We get the metro to the vague area and start walking. We're happy to eat the first thing we see that looks good and we don't have to wait long. A street corner vendor is bustling with scooter delivery drivers so it must be good. It's similar to what we had yesterday, but a slightly different take on the Jianbing with less of a crêpe feel to it and more egg! Delicious and super filling.
We continue on past actual shopping streets with supermarkets and butchers, rather than watches and handbags. We end up in the heart of the Hongkou district. This was home to a number of prominent thinkers and writers in the 1920s including Lu Xun, who's former residence is now a little museum.
We spot a busy restaurant across the street selling xialongbow, which we have been hunting for since day 1. Given how busy this place is, we have to try it. Figuring out the "system" will be the hard part though.
We are able to order 24 and get a ticket. There are no free tables. We head towards the kitchen window where the goods are dispensed. A group of customers in the corner are doing more chatting than eating - they get a friendly reprimand from the waitress and get back to business.
We manage to find a seat and get our dumplings with the help of the locals. We sit next to someone who speaks English. "How did you find this place?" he asks. "Got lucky" we answer. He said he travelled 20kms to get here. It's his favourite xialongbow in Shanghai. Jeff asks where he was able to find a park, surely not easy? "I know a spot under the cameras where they can't see me". Clever.
After the obligatory mouth scoulding, we finish our xialongbow and carry on up the street, taking in the local vibes. The streets are lined with plane trees here as well. It keeps the sun out nicely. The weather has been great since we arrived. Low 20s and wispy cloud cover.
We duck into a bookstore and see all of the Lu Xun books, including the famous Diary of a Madman. No English translations though.
We walk for 20 odd minutes through back streets to 1933 Old Millfun - an old slaughterhouse architectured in the style of Art Deco and industrial modernism, and now unsurprisingly converted into a creative and commercial space.
We take 5 with a Starbucks before exploring this cool building. It's pretty much all original because it's all concrete, including the spiral ramps and narrow bridges all designed to move the animals around. It's all open design was to let the air flow through. We get to the top and have a little view of the surrounding area. You can see the old making way for the new everywhere you look in Shanghai. Rows of old residential units 3 floors high are surrounded by the equivalent but 50 or 100 floors high!
We follow a river down towards the Bund. We spot some new birds for the collection (yep, we have reached that age) - a few Black-crowned Night Heron sitting on the telephone wires over the water, waiting for their dinner to float by.
A very short ferry-ride over the Huangpu river to the Pudong side. The waterfront is done well on this side as well. Great running and cycling tracks are provided as well. We aim for the Oriental Pearl TV Tower - the futuristic looking one with the spheres.
We are aiming for something bigger though; Shanghai Tower - the 3rd tallest in the world (2nd depending on how you measure it - that one in KL is cheating). It's so tall Jeff and Courts are having to talk themselves into it.
128 floors, 632 metres, the elevator gets up to speeds of 60kmph. And even then you're in there for a minute to get to the observation deck.
We get out and have to take a few minutes to get our sealegs. Jeff is struggling. Heights are no fun. But the view is incredible and slowly we loosen up and enjoy, despite the subtle swaying going on. It's a misty kind of day, so the sunset isn't as stunning as it can be and the view of the wider city is limited. Still impressive.
We wait around as the lights start coming on around the city but decide waiting another 30 minutes for the Bund to light up in full is not worth it. People are already camping around the good view points waiting for that. We decide to get back in the elevator which is effectively free-falling for half a kilometre and head for home.
There is a way back to our side of the river via a "sight-seeing tunnel". More fun than the metro, we guess, and not too expensive - although the VR experience that we didn't avail ourselves of was probably a chunk of the ticket price.
We jump in the little 8-person tram thing and 15 minutes and a bunch of cheap electronic displays later and we are on the Bund again.
We metro home and decide to stick to the old faithful dumplings from last night. We both overdo it on the chili again but are thoroughly impressed.
A 20km, 48 dumplings day done. We gave Shanghai a fair nudge, that's for sure.
