Throughout the trip Viking placed us in 4/5 star hotels. My room in Shanghai was larger than many rooms in my house excluding the en suite with a walk in shower and full size bath! The latter was most welcome after 12 hours of travel and it didn’t take me long to run a hot and relaxing bath followed by a siesta but by 1.00pm I was wide awake and wondering what to do with my free afternoon and evening in Shanghai.
Some lunch seemed like a good idea and having asked the concierge was pointed to what I can only describe as a Health Fast Food restaurant in the hotel complex. I could have gone to Starbucks but I decided to explore modern Chinese fast food. Incidentally you may have heard recently that Starbucks has done so well that it is planning on opening another 1000 outlets in China! Young Chinese clearly like coffee but tea of all kinds still remains the beverage of choice but more of that in another blog.
I did approach the restaurant with some trepidation but I need not have worried the door was opened for me by two pretty young Chinese girls who greeted me in English and I was quickly shown to a table and made comfortable. Mainly salads with some fish accompanied by carrot or pumpkin juice! The restaurant was full of English, American, Australian and young Chinese all with their mobiles and Blackberries and all busy discussing and doing deals – well that’s how it appeared anyway.
After a very tasty salad with a salmon fillet I paid with a credit card – all very efficient (I don’t know why I was so surprised after all I was in the most cosmopolitan and major trading city in China!) and left to explore the main shopping street in Shanghai the Nanjing Road. All the main streets that run East/West in this city are named after major cities in China whereas the streets that run North/South are named after famous politicians.
What first struck me is the mist that veils everything, not too thick today and it is something that you get used to, especially on theYangtze and in the gorges it is something that adds a sense of drama and mystery. The mist of course is pollution mainly from industrial and power generation sources. As I later learnt the Three Gorges Dam is already making a huge contribution to a reduction in pollution but at what price some would ask. I’ll return to that question later.
You really only notice the mist because of the many high rise buildings that sit on either side of this mile long shopping paradise just packed with stores selling the top Western brands – all much more expensive because of a hefty import tax on luxury goods. This doesn’t seem to have diminished the desire of young Chinese to buy such items since the street was crowded with stylishly dressed people. The girls in particular all seemed to be wearing high fashion that I thought was restricted to the cover of ‘Vogue’ or ‘Glamour’ well not here! High fashion or not and wearing those impossible shoes they all looked extremelyattractive.
Avoiding the street hawkers selling impossibly cheap Parker pens and Rolex watches I spent a very interesting couple of hours wanderingalong this wide avenue through beautifully manicured sycamore trees with a street cleaner wielding a kind of besom brush made from reeds or a broad leafed grass every 200 metres or so – but no graffiti, no litter and no acres of chewing gum stuck to the disfiguring the pavements. Thankfully chewing gum is one Western habit the Chinese have eschewed.
Every crossroads has its own ‘Crossroad Assistant’ using a whistle to stop you walking at the wrong time although you quickly learn that neither their entreaties for you to cross or a green pedestrian crossing sign doesn’t mean that you can traverse the street with priority – traffic just comes at you from the left mainly and just keeps coming!! No good holding up your hand or stopping you just have to get out of the way. I quickly learnt to follow the locals!!
Every so often a side courtyard/street opened off the main avenue offering an inviting view behind the scenes but all were guarded by security – in fact almost every building had a security guard one of whom asked me not to take photos inside a shopping Mal - so conscious of my camera I decided not to venture into these haunts so I will never know if they represented ‘the hidden China’.
Having avoided the inevitable MacDonalds I did venture into Marks & Spencers. Apart from familiar shop fittings, men’s silk ties and the odd shirt everything on sale had been specially selected for the Chinese market so conventional shirts, trousers etc. but all more colourful, more styled and tailored. Here again I found the greeters at the doorand the old fashioned ‘floorwalkers’ anxious to help and make a sale.
I made it safely back to the hotel having enjoyed my first view of Shanghai.
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