Mark got me a subscription to National Geographic Traveler for Christmas and my first issue had an article about Shanghai so I got some great ideas and looked some things up on line. We headed out at 7:30 am. A little earlier than necessary but they were the only tickets we could get.
Here are Abby and James on the bullet train. It gets to Shanghai in 30 minutes. That's pretty remarkable considering it takes over 2 hours in the car. Anyway, as you can see the seats are quite roomy (more so than airplane seats). Plenty of leg room and there is a lady that comes with coffee, tea and newspapers. This, of course, it the soft seat area of the train. The kids like to say we are riding "first class". The round trip to Shanghai in soft seats for a family of four costs around $35 US. So not bad.Once we arrived in Shanghai we hopped on the subway. The train station and the subway station are connected so you just have to follow the signs. I wanted to see the area of Shanghai called the French Concession for this trip and had looked up a walking tour online. All we had to do was look for street signs and the tour walked us by various shops, restaurants and parks worth seeing. I liked this because I'm learning that exteriors can be very deceiving. There are a lot of places that I would not think to be special and not take a look based on how they look from the street. So this walking tour encouraged us to have a look and we were wonderfully surprised at what was there.
The first place we dipped into was the Old China Hand Reading Room. It was an old place where you could find used english and chinese books. Old furniture and a place to sit down and have a cup of tea. (also free wifi) We found an english coffee table book on Texas and had to laugh. The shop smelled like my old UST classrooms, which I love.
Our next stop was a small park. Very typical city park with a koi pond, old twisty trees and plenty of seniors chatting away. The older Chinese meet their friends for tai chi or do their exercises. The parks have set up senior-friendly exercise equipment for them. Chairs to sit on and perform light leg presses (get their legs and knees moving to avoid joint problems), these leg swinging things (very similar to a man-powered elliptical trainer), as well as pullies for their arm movements. I think it's great. Chinese seniors are very active. Claude was telling me last week that there is mandatory retirement in China at 55. Whether you can afford it or not. So they mostly take care of their grandchildren and socialize with their friends. I had to take a picture of these two men. They were having so much fun at the park together that morning.
We didn't see much else along this road other than a tea house. Really neat stuff but nothing we could carry with us for the rest of the day. So we headed for a famous area of the French Concession called Taikang Road. This area has been cleaned up and is now popular among young Chinese and expats. It is a main road with alley ways sprouting in different directions. There are many art galleries, cafes and boutiques. We took our time looking in various shops and stopped for lunch in a little cafe that is about the size of our bedroom.
This was one of my favorite shops. Thai products on the first floor, Vietnamese products on the second floor. I love these lamps. I want one. But I knew I didn't want to carry it around for the rest of the day. Another time I guess.Before we had lunch we ducked into Woo Cashmere. A beautiful shop with high quality silk and cashmere. I tried on a grey cashmere shawl that was so incredibly soft but talked myself out of it. I did buy a silk scarf with blue and white patterned china on it. They had the same pattern in pink but Abigail wanted me to get the blue. It even has a tea pot on it!
As we headed back out after lunch, we ran into a man with a cameraman who wanted to ask Mark some questions. He was with the english news station that we never watch but probably should. Anyway, here he is interviewing Mark. He wanted to know how the global economic crisis was affecting us and our coworkers in Suzhou as well as friends and family back home. Not sure but I think the agenda was to send the message that China is minimally affected compared to the rest of the world.
After walking around some more James started to get antsy. Looking at art galleries and various shops is right up Abigail's alley but not so much James'. I had read about an art store where you could sit down at your own easel and creat your own masterpiece so we set off to find it. The area really is a labyrinth so we had a heck of a time finding this shop. It didn't look like anything from the front but the shop owner took us up these rickety, old stairs into the art studio and James and Abigail set to work.
While the kids painted Mark and I sat with some hot tea and warmed up. The kids really enjoyed it and we came home with two new pieces of artwork for the apartment! Here are some views of the alley we took from the upstairs studio.
So that was our day. We had dinner and headed back to the train station. We will most likely head back to Shanghai in April sometime. There are many other areas I would like to see.
I will blog again on Sunday, lots of stuff going on this week.
Hope everyone is well. Summer vacation is right around the corner, I can't believe it.
Sending all our love until next time!
