Shanghai: Welcome to the Future

When Tony and I awoke to our first full day in Shanghai, I gotta admit, I felt like I slept well but was a little sluggish. Tony, however, had all sorts of energy and was ready to roll. This motivated me to get up and go. Tony had gone out on the street to find us some breakfast and came back and said: “Uh, it looks nohthing like it did last night – there are like a million people walking around outside.” And he felt like he was the only foreigner among them.

We ate breakfast at Gianni’s place (Gianni had woken up at 6am to get out the door early for workout and work). I had gotten up around 8am. We probably headed out of the apartment by 10am to go find a taxi. We jumped in one cab and we couldn’t communicate with the guy and so he had no idea where we wanted to go. We jumped out of the cab. What to do? We don’t speak Mandarin. Plan B: We opened our tourist guidebook and noticed that some of the sights we wanted to see had Chinese symbols next to them. We hailed down another cab, pointed to the Chinese language that matched “The Bund” and we were good to go. We took a cab ride down to the area known as “The Bund.”

We would begin our day walking along the Huangpu River. To our left, we could see all the old colonial buildings, most built in the mid-1800s through the early 1900s by all the various Western commercial powers who dominated this market during those times. Most of these building are now banks, hotels, and even stores. We walked into a couple of them as we strolled along the wide promenade. But as we looked left to see the historical buildings that once dominated the riverside a century ago, your eyes couldn’t stop staring across the river to the incredible futuristic skyline in the Pudong financial district. It just looked sick.

Before we could make our way down the Bund, however, we started chatting with some Chinese college students who thought we looked like “movie stars” with our sunglasses. They told us they were from the Tsingtao area of China (where the famous beer is from) and told us about a tea house down the street they were about to visit. So we followed them in there and had a nice hour long adventure being shown all sorts of Chinese tea. It wasn’t cheap but it was a fun experience and those students were really fascinated to talk with us. They spoke English and asked us all sorts of questions about America while our tea host told us all about the tea (while they translated for us). It was the most fun part of the day really.

After that experience, we continued down the Bund and our new Chinese friends went their own way. We exchanged contact info and perhaps we’ll be in touch again.

As we continued down the road, we stopped to take photos of various sights until we ended up just a half mile or so down at a waterside snack restaurant where we got a delicious Chinese meal for very cheap prices. Following that, we got on the Sightseeing Tunnel ride. This goes underground and is very quick as it takes you under the Huangpu River. The ride features very psychadelic colors and kind of reminded me of that scene in Charlie & the Charlie Factory where they are on that weird boat ride.

Once across (or through?) the river, we walked a short two blocks to the famous Oriental Pearl TV Tower. We bought tickets for that and went right up to the observatory deck. It wasn’t until we were able to get up there that we were able to truly see all that encompasses Shanghai. Holy wow. This city is huge. It puts the New York City skyline to shame. I mean, in every direction we looked (the observatory deck was circular so we could look in every direction), the skyline of skyscrapers seemed endless. This is a city of 23 million people and it’s no joke. According to that great source, Wikipedia, Shanghai is the most populated city in the world, with the city proper having 17.8 million people.

From the tower we were in, we had a very close-up view of two of the largest buildings in China and one that is being built that will be even larger (in fact, it already is higher) once the construction finishes. They are huge and fairly new. But before we ventured over to those structures, there were a few other areas to observe inside the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. One was the “space port” which was a small, but neat area to take pictures in. The other was the Shanghai History Museum on the first floor. It was very well done and gave us a quick tour through mostly modern Shanghai.

We departed the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and walked a few blocks over to the Shanghai World Financial Center. On our way, we walked along these very neat pedestrian walkways above the streets. You could tell this very new part of Shanghai underwent some serious planning and at one point everything just looked so futuristic that I remarked to my brother: “Welcome to the Future.”

One of Gianni’s friends had recommended to us that when we got over to China’s tallest building, the Shanghai World Financial Center, not to pay the fee to go up to the observatory deck on the 101st floor. Rather, he said, we could go up to the bar at the Park Hyatt (which takes up some of the floors in this 1,614-foot building) and grab a drink at the bar on the 91st floor. That was a very good idea. We sat at that bar for a late afternoon drink and just observed the mind boggling view. Just across the street was the Jinmao Tower. Built by American architects, it was once the tallest building in China and it just has a really neat design (looks like a pen). On the other side of the street is the new structure going up that is already taller than the building we were in, but it’s construction is still underway.

Once we departed, we walked back towards the river. On our way, we walked through one of the very new malls in Shanghai (just two blocks from the Shanghai World Financial Center). They have a ton of very high end stores. The prices of products were much higher than they are in the U.S. We also walked through a very neat looking Apple store. It is certainly the largest Apple store I’ve ever been in.

We made our way back to the ferry and for the equivalent of about 30 cents (2 Yuan) we crossed the river right at 6:00 PM. The lighting was perfect for our photos of the Pudong district with the many skyscrapers rising behind us as we went back across the Bund. From there, we hailed a cab (traffic was a bit heavier than at 10am). We met up with Gianni who had just gotten home from work.

We ordered pizza into his place, had some beers with his two friends Jo and Flo (who we had hung out with the night before) and then we were ready for a night on the town.

These guys are all very familiar with the city and the many bars and clubs. They had a hook up at a placed called “Mint.” Yes, Tallahassee, there is also a place called Mint here. Except this one has a shark tank! (Very small sharks). We got in (for free) and it was “models night.” (They must have known we were coming). The place was packed and the house music was really great. We were there until around 2am (Flo and Jo left us around midnight, apparently Europeans can’t hang, ha! ok, they did have work in the morning). We grabbed some street food and cabbed back. What a great day and fun night after our first full day in Shanghai. Welcome to the future.