Shanghai Nights (7)

My second week was taken up with fairly intensive training and I tended not to stray too far in the evenings for dinner. I did go out a couple of times - once to The Great Tang restaurant which was just a block away behind the hotel. The food and atmosphere were good but with the usual problem of eating alone and being unwilling to order dishes which wouldn't get finished. I guess I have a strong aversion to wasting food so I'd rather order too little and eat it all than order too much and waste a third of it.

On Wednesday evening I chose a restaurant just down the block near the corner of Dongfang Road and Weifang Road. It was absolutely packed with people but looked reasonably 'homely'. Being alone I got a table, even though there were people waiting in the foyer so I guess that's one advantage of eating alone. Looking through the menu I spotted a bowl of 'short' soup and indicated to the waitress that I would like that please. She responded with a most definite 'No!' so I tried again to make sure but got the same result. I ended up choosing a 'small' wok meal of stir-fry chicken. Two wok sizes were shown so I chose the small one thinking it would just be a nice sized meal for one. Wrong! It turned out to be at least 30cm wide and piled up with a fairly large meal - certainly enough for two hungry people without any rice etc to go with it. IN the end I don't think I quite made it through half of the meal but at around 50 Yuan (AU$9) I certainly wasn't concerned about the cost.

On Friday night, my last working day, Kyo kindly invited the whole team for dinner. Being the visitor I was asked what cuisine style I'd prefer. I'd already had Hunan cuisine but thought I would try it again. The restaurant Kyo chose was on Weifang Road not far from my hotel which was quite convenient. I can't remember the restaurant name but it had a bust of Chairman Mao, who came from Hunan, in the foyer.

Young, Jasmine, Me, Kyo, Charlie, and Frank at dinner

It was a very nice dinner and a fitting wrap up to my time in Shanghai.

During the week Kyo had asked me if I was planning to buy any presents for the family. I intended to go back to Yuyuen Gardens and just play it by ear. Pat had asked me to look out and see if I could find any embroidery silks so I mentioned that to Kyo. It turned out that Charlie's wife knows where to get them - just near YuYuen Gardens so it was arranged that Jasmine and Charlie and his wife - Ice - would meet me on Saturday and we would go shopping together. They would not only take me to the right place but also do the bargaining to make sure I wasn't overcharged.

Since my flight back to Australia was not until 8:20pm I arranged with the hotel for a 4pm checkout which would leave me plenty of time to get to the airport etc. I was already mostly packed up by the time Jasmine, Charlie and Ice came to pick me up so there would be little left to do on my return from shopping.

By now the taxi ride over to the western, Shanghai, side was becoming familiar and I no longer felt totally lost when we got into the narrower streets of the old town on the way to Yuyuen Gardens. That's not to say that I could confidently navigate myself but at least I felt that I could probably find my way back to (say) the Bund without too much drama.

Being Saturday the Yuyuen Gardens and surrounding areas was packed with tourists and local people. We walked through the gardens shopping area and I surveyed the shops and stalls to see if anything triggered the 'that's it' response for something for Dominic, Garth and Leonore. A few things had some appeal but then we were exiting from another portal to go to the more modern market where the embroidery silks would be. Charlie and Ice went in to find the particular stall while Jasmine and I just ambled around the narrow aisles to await Charlie's call. The building was full of stall selling a huge variety of goods. The aisles are about a metre wide but some of that is taken up by the stock overflowing the fronts and of course people stopping to examine the goods made navigation very slow.

Eventually Jasmine's phone rang and we met Charlie at the front to go to the particular shop Ice had chosen. True to promise, the shopkeeper had a wide range of embroidery silks in 15 metre hanks and a price of 3 Yuan each (Au 50c) had been negotiated so I bought an unchosen assortment of 50 from the bag. Trying to choose them would have taken half the day and I probably wouldn't have come up with a better selection anyway.

Street scene near Yuyuen Gardens, Shanghai

Leaving the crowded market building we went back to Yuyuen Gardens shopping area. As we moved along I decided on a name seal each for 'the kids' with their name in Chinese characters. Several shops were selling these with promise of about 10 minutes to do the actual name carving. I chose some nice seal stones which had the appropriate Chinese Zodiac animal on them and then Charlie and Jasmine started the bidding war. The starting price of 280 Yuan each was obviously too high and little pprogress was made until Charlie turned to me and said "OK - let's go - we'll find somewhere else". The atmosphere changed very quickly and a price of 100 Yuan each was agreed, inclusive of name carving. I duly pointed out the correct names in the book which they have and then we had to go to another shop where the actual carving is done.

Carving name seals, Yuyuen Gardens, Shanghai

After the carving was done we wandered back out looking at some of the other stalls on the way. One could spend a whole day or more in there and still not see everything of interest. One shop of interest to me was a musical instrument shop where they had traditional Chinese instruments like the Erhu, as well as western instruments. I would dearly have liked to bring something back like an Erhu but I didn't think it would pass AQIS controls with the snakeskin soundhead etc. One instrument they had was the most enormous harmonica I have ever seen. It must have been about 30 centimetres long and would be quite heavy I imagine.

Leaving the Gardens we found a taxi to take us to lunch. Jasmine, Ice and Charlie had chosen a Korean restaurant at Peoples Square where the food is cooked on a gas-fired barbecue at the table. It was very good but again I had trouble with the metal Korean chopsticks. I must be improving though as I did get enough to eat. After lunch I bid farewell to Charlie and Ice and Jasmine and I took a taxi back to the hotel. Jasmine lives nearby the hotel so it was convenient for her to go home from there. After I farewelled Jasmine I had a couple of hours to kill before heading off to the airport and this gave me time to finish packing etc and mentally prepare myself for returning to Australia.

I had decided to use the Maglev train to get to the airport, just to say that I had done it. The terminal is close to the Longyang Road metro station so I took a taxi there from the hotel and paid my 40 Yuan. The one-way 30km trip usually costs 50 Yuan but bona-fide air travellers with an airline ticket for that day get a 10 Yuan discount.

The train left soon after I boarded and was soon up to 200 km/h and rising towards its maximum speed of 430 km/h. It only holds maximum speed for about 2 minutes and there is little to guage the speed by. It sort of felt like a jet aircraft going down the runway for take off. Fortunately it never left the track. The jpurey from Longyang Road to the airport takes only 8 minutes - considerably less than the taxi ride.

I was a bit early for the flight but was well placed for when the check-in opened so that I could get the seating I wanted. Once through to the gate lounge I was struck by the similarity between Pudong Airport building and the new international airport buildings in Bangkok. I haven't researched it but they appeared to be very similar in design.

Anyway, the flight left on time and the rest, as they say, is mystory.