I WAS SHANGHAIED!!

I love to cruise because I get to experience the sights, sounds, flavors and people and their culture from a broad spectrum of this great universe.  In so doing, you come across places you want to visit again and again, places you never want to see again, and in those rare moments in time, you find that hidden gem.  For me, Shanghai is that hidden gem.  Oh please, let me be Shanghaied again and again!!  I hope after you read about our day here, you too will want to visit this great Chinese port city.

I planned an all day tour with Beijing Discovery Tours.  I worked with Jeff, an ex-pat American lawyer living in Beijing.  He planned our Yangtze River cruise and I will be on 2 more tours within China with him – in Beijing and Dalian. I had 28 people on my tour, and picked up 3 more the morning of the tour.  Too large of a group for this very busy city.

The Diamond Princess is 997 feet long – just a little too big for the cruise terminal in Shanghai.  So we docked in the container port about 45 minutes from town.  That does not sound like a long distance, but in China it is a long way from downtown due to all the cars, buses, bikes, and people.  The roadways turn into one huge rush hour all day long.

We were met by our driver, Mr. Chang, and our guide, Rocky.  Rocky seemed to like everything American.  He was a young man who explained a lot about the city and a lot about life in China.  He would like to immigrate to the U.S.  It appears a lot of young Chinese are getting a taste of capitalism and want to leave the confines of a communist government. 

Rocky took us to our first stop – The Jade Buddha temple.  It is not allowed to take photos of the Buddha, but I did get a lot of photos going through the temple.  I had to buy a book on the temple in order to get a photo of the Jade Buddha.  It is white jade, very rare and beautiful.  The temple itself is very large with a maze of rooms to negotiate your way through.  It is an active temple, so we saw many people praying and offering incense. 

We drove down to The Bund, a mixture of the old and the new.  Across the river, there are all the new highrises and modern buildings.  We walked along The Bund which follows the river until we came upon the Z-Dragon Restaurant.  We had a delicious meal all brought out on platters for us to share.  Generally, there was a soup, lots of rice, sometimes noodles, various meat dishes (many of them very spicy), stir-fried vegetables, etc.  Some folks were more cautious than others. I enjoyed trying them.  I did not see anything that was “unidentifiable”. 

We went on to Yu Yuan Gardens.  What a peaceful, beautiful place.  It is called a garden, but most of the place was filled with ponds and stone work.  We even found the “Dragon Wall”.

We ended the day with a little shopping or a walk through the backstreets of the Old City.  I chose to go down the streets. What a fascinating way to end the day.  We saw all the locals bargaining and buying their evening meal.  There were homes over stores and the residents would hang their wash from the power lines!!  We all boarded the bus, very tired but happy having spent an action-packed day in a vibrant city.  More good memories.



Kathleen & Carlos on the Bund



Laundry hanging from electrical wires along backstreet of old city