Shanghai Part 1

Well we knew when we were in Shanghai, the biggest city in China, when we took this picture of the taxi line at the airport on Wednesday, October 25th. After getting to our hotel we didn’t have much time before we went to dinner. We went to a nicer Chinese restaurant after walking around for a while. It was pretty nice, but it was funny when we walked in because all the waiters and other staff kept saying “Good Morning!” to us even though it wasn’t. We had to walk a little bit to get to our table so we heard a large number of them. On the way out of the place, they kept saying it, which got us laughing. I decided to teach them what they should say using Chinese, but it turns out the joke was on me. They were actually saying “huan ying guan ni” which is a polite way to welcome someone. I still think they were actually saying “good morning” as a joke because all the other restaurants we went to were clearly not saying “good morning.”

The only other thing we did on Wednesday was go to the 88th floor observatory area of the Jin Mao Tower, which is at the center of the rapidly growing Pudong economic district. Last summer when I was in Shanghai we went up there too, so I knew it was a cool place to go. The 88th floor gives a really good view at all the buildings going up in Pudong and Puxi (the east bank and west bank of the river).

Here’s a good picture of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower from Jin Mao.


Here’s the view down to the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, which is the highest hotel in the world. It starts on the 53rd floor of the building.


Here are the two buildings used towards the end of Mission Impossible 3.


This picture of the tower from the ground is a little blurry, but I think it makes it look cooler.

On Thursday we went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, which is a really interesting look at the past and future of Shanghai. The center documents the history of the city and all of the different European concessions that ushered in its future development. The centerpiece of the center is a huge model that shows what the city is going to look like in 2015. The other areas of the center explained the plans to expand the airport, build a deep-see port off the coast, create suburbs, solve the traffic problems, etc. The whole building is really like a big piece of propaganda, but I think all of what they propose is feasible, unlike promises that are made in North Korea (see Ryuguong Hotel).

The Center was right near Nanjing Road, one of the biggest shopping districts in the world, so we decided to walk around for a while. We immediately started getting hounded by vendors trying to take us to their secret stashes of purses, wallets, watches, and DVDs. They were really easy to pick out, so we found that a good method to keep them away from you is to point directly at them before they start talking. My dad did want to find a purse for my sister, so we decided to walk down a back alley. Two people saw us and brought us into their store, which had a hidden door to a room with purses. They were too expensive, so we went to another store deeper in the alley. This next store had two other white people bargaining for purses. We ended up finding out that they were also from Minneapolis and were here buying up lots of purses and then shipping them back to the US to sell.

We followed Nanjing Road all the way east to the river, which brought us to the historic Bund. I don’t think there is like the Bund anywhere else in the world. The buildings are all from the concessions granted to western countries during the early 20th century. Almost all were banks and most still are today, but the owners are Chinese. When you turn around you get THE image of Shanghai, the always-changing skyline of the Pudong economic district. After taking some pictures we called it a night and went back to the hotel.