youtube video clips http://youtu.be/KzbtUqU7Qcs = Shanghai, and http://youtu.be/FgWA_yne1VI = Zhujiajiao
3/26/2013
Staying
at an airbnb, the ”lujiazui riverview room shanghai” in the New Pudong section
of Shanghai with spectacular views; for example, Shanghai World
Financial Center – the tall one in front, 101 stories – I went to the top,
above the hanger part, on a previous trip alone because Narda doesn’t like
heights. Behind it is the Shanghai Tower being built to go to 125
stories 2,073.87 feet when all is said and done. Where
we are staying looking at this we are only on the 29th floor so that
seems safe.
In
the news this weeks is “A sand scandal is brewing in China, with
concerns that low-quality concrete has been used in the construction of many of
the country’s largest buildings — putting them at risk of collapse. The Ping’an Finance Center is
planned to top out at 660m, making it not only China’s tallest building but the
second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Dubai. Revelation from
Shenzhen’s Housing and Construction Bureau that substandard sea sand concrete
had been used in its construction…”
View
from our 29th floor balcony, looking out on the Huangpu River – which
Narda was nervous about me being out on.
We
have an office view blocking part of view and I was hoping to spy in on someone
at work but in the three days we were there not too many people were at work
when we were at home.
I
took some hundred photos and heaps during the day too but it is the night views
that I liked. This is basically the view from lying in bed.
We had our apartment near the Pudong Avenue Station, Subway Line 4, a 4-minute
walk up to the subway station.
Two blocks from our house is the Shanghai Ferry. What was so
much fun about this two RMB (thirty cents) ride across the Huangpu River is that it is all motor
scooters – the extent of which will be in my youtube video http://youtube.com/neuage09
It is about equal to the
ferry across the Mississippi in New Orleans. The views, hanging out of the side
of the boat of Shanghai was well worth the ride. There is nothing on the other
side of the river at the arrival point except for fifty scooters roaring off
and up an unlit roads so we shelled out another two RMB and rode back home.
Yesterday
we went to Zhujajiao, a water town – there are several water towns that
surround Shanghai. We went to one of the closest. Zhuajiao took an hour to get
to and is well worth the visit. The bus driver thought he was driving a sports
car as they do in China and we changed lanes at high speed with reckless
abandon. Zhujajiao is a bit over an hour from downtown Shanghai. It was only 14
RMB (couple of bucks) for the ride – cheaper than a thrill ride at an amusement
park and twice as scary.
It
is interesting seeing other Westerners who try to place where you are from. We
were looking at quilts and this person about my age started speaking to me in
German which I do not understand. Narda answered him in German but the guy
ignored me and kept talking until I made it clear I did not speak German. Later
some people thought they had met us the day before – said they saw Narda at a
gem centre – considering we were flying to Shanghai that day and went straight
to our apartment how we look like every other Western I am not sure or that I
look German. I barely look like me anymore.
Zhujajiao,
located in the Qingpu District of Shanghai, is called the Venice of China but so are a few other water towns such
as Zhouzhuang and Suzhou and Tong Li. Zhujajiao was
established about 1,700 years ago. There are
claims that there are archaeological findings dating back 5,000 years but
having left my carbon dating machine home I cannot verify that. 36 stone
bridges and numerous rivers line Zhujiajiao, and many ancient buildings still
line the riverbanks, several looking like they will collapse at any moment. We
did not do the tour of the town at 88 RMB not because of money but because a
two and a half hour walking tour with someone learning English seemed
difficult. We wandered the town checking out Yuanjin Buddhist Temple, built,
they say, ‘originally’, an operative word in post-Mao China, in 1341. OK, so we
are the skeptical tourists but so much is so much a replica and even replicas
are turning out to be replicas of replicas that we doubt that anything is as it
is proclaimed. Nevertheless we enjoyed ourselves and rode one of their boats
along one of their rivers.
In
the midst of Shanghai there is ‘Old Street’, historically called Miaoqian Dajie,
which is either a bit of a restored section or a replica of the town
from the
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) created for tourist. We have been to Shanghai five times now and
this place at least three of those times. At least it is not referred to as the
Venice of China.
We even fond an everyday, or
three in a row, breakfast place not far from People's Square, getting off at
the East Nanjing Road Station and getting out at exit three. Mojos serves a
proper Western breakfast so we had toast (though they did not have jam for the
toast and by day three we had brought our own jar), eggs over easy, hash browns
and coffee. The first day they had loud thumping music and Narda asked them to
turn it down so they turned it off making the morning much more pleasant. The
other days they had a wide mixture of music from Jimi Hendrix to B. B. King to
Dido, obviously the ‘Western tunes mix’.
After a couple of years in
China we are so over Chinese food. I even eat at KFC, something I never did in
the past because in China they have a good corn, carrot some other vegetable
mix and mashed potatoes – the only two things they have I will eat and cannot
get elsewhere.
One
thing I do notice about this trip is the lack of being able to get my video
clips edited and put on line. I have been lugging my 17 + inch computer with me
for years but we thought we would make our trip lighter and just bring an iPad,
iPhones and small laptop all of which have no way to edit my many clips into a
proper movie. Yes it is good to write and send out stuff sitting on the metro
but in those spare moments at our hotel when I would normally be putting
together my clips I now just look at hundreds of photos with no way to edit my
video. So already I know what I will be doing when I return home on Sunday for
a day. I will have at least three youtube clips ready to go before Monday
because nothing says it better than a movie.
We
moved out of our apartment with the great view yesterday after three days and
now we are staying at the Metropark Hotel at 159 New Golden Road Pudong. We are
in Shanghai to attend the EARCOS (East Asia Region Council of Schools)
conference and the Metropark is near the school the conference is at; Concordia
International College. The school proclaims on their web site that they are grounded in Christian values, which is
something to say in this country of rapidly evolving capitalism; Mao would be
shocked, though he would be pleased with the constant destruction of the
country to make way for the modern, soon to fall down because they are made from
sea-sand, buildings. The hotel looks
like a strange concept of a castle though it is really a good hotel and the
beds are so comfortable that going to a conference does not seem like we are on
holiday which we sort of are as this is our spring break we have given up so we
can continually be doing school work.
,
|
|||