21st March - Shanghai

I woke up early on the train and watched the Chinese people preparing their giant pots of noodles and flasks of tea. They were slurping and burping away as usual and it was making me feel queasy so I stuck my earplugs in and went back to bed.

We arrived in Shanghai about midday and quite easily navigated the Metro to our super-huge hostel, where we checked in to our 4 bed dorm, sorted out a few bits (including the lost art of machine washing our own clothes), had a quick chat with an English guy called Krishan and headed back out to do some exploring.
In the city we walked along Bund, the area alongside the river and were fascinated by what we saw. The Pudong skyline hosts a range of skyscrapers that are simultaneously beautiful, hideous and impressive. It was, until recently, just an area of marshland but was declared a 'special economic zone' and is now the home to these ultra-modern, if not futuristic, giants. We were not sure whether to consider them ecological monstrosities or architectural artwork so we just stood in awe of them for a while and then used the 'panoramic sweep' function of our camera to try to capture the view.

As we sat trying to work out the guidebook recommendations for food, we were caught up in a photoshoot with very sweet young woman who, from our experience coud have been anywhere between 16 and 25. She was initially just posing in front of us and sneakily pointing at us so we invited her over for a proper picture. She was so coy and bashful but seemed chuffed to bits.

Then we headed up East Nanjing Road, where the first department stores in China opened in 1920's, and where modernism and consumerism have helped lead the way in radically changing China and pushing it to the forefront of fashion and business.

The street glared with guady neon as far as the eye could see but yet on closer inspection, there were many designer shops with vast, classy and extremely expensive window displays. There were huge screens displaying super-bright, pixelated information, skyscrapers lined with lights and even a (disgustingly small) fishtank full of sharks and giant turtles. In addition, there were also countless McDonald's, coffee shops and streets hawkers selling heel wheels for shoes and flying, spinny LED whizzy things.

The dreaded hunger arrived again and we went into a little place with a limited menu and pictures. I showed them my phrase to ask them to point out the vegetarian things on the menu and she pointed at the 'vegetable noodle' symbol in my book and then back at the board. I was hoping for something different so also ordered some spring rolls. The noodles came with a hefty serving of chopped liver nestling in the top and pasty sausage balls lurking under the surface, and the spring rolls were very mushy so I set Matt to work tackling the first while I attempted the second.

Walked to People's Square and Matt started wanting a coffee. He's never liked  coffee but had a free one at the hostel the other day and now seems hooked. We went into a little coffee shop that sold tasty looking cakes but didn't have enough money on us and had to abandon ship at the counter. We ended up in McDonalds trying to get him a hit. He compained that it was weak so I worry for the future.

We had to take the metro back to the hostel at the early hour of 9pm but since the last metro is ridiculously at 9.27pm, we didn't want to get stranded and have to negotiate the bus system since it's apparently even difficult for Mandarin speakers to navigate.