Shanghaied

Shanghai has been an unexpected delight, despite never intending on visiting it until a week ago when we were denied entry to Tibet. The Shanghai skyline is my favourite part, especially at night. Across the river the futuristic buildings illuminate, advertisements scrolling across their LED embedded facades. On the opposite bank the future is faced by buildings from Shanghais past as a quasi-colonial outpost of various European powers. Contemporary Chinese architecture is met by the classical European. Huge crowds line the boulevard, eager to have their picture taken with the pretty lights.

My favourite building is the Shanghai World Financial Centre. At almost 500m it is the tallest building in continental Asia. Wanting to avoid the outrageous fee for the observation deck on floor 101, we instead snuck into the 87th floor bar of the Grand Hyatt. In the lift up our ears popped. Our time on the 87th floor was limited to a few minutes, and we couldn't get near the windows without waiters coming at us with uber expensive menus, but it was a fun experience none the less. Next door they are building a skyscraper that will be even taller.

Shanghai has some wonderfully parks and gardens, beautifully landscaped according to Chinese tradition. We have spent the past few lunchtimes in a park or garden with some street noodles. The food in China has been a bit of a challenge; they try to put pork in just about everything.

Shanghai is a commercial capitol, the streets are lined with high end fashion labels and the streets buzz with shoppers. In an officially communist country, shanghai oozes with capitalism. The China of today seems so far removed from it's turbulent day's under Mao. I sometimes look old faces in the street and wonder what it must be like to have lived through the cultural revolution, the famines, and end up here, beneath the billboards for diamonds, near the crowded Apple store full of fashionable young Chinese. How their country has changed (and yet the government remains the same).

Slick bullet trains now cross a country that just half a century ago was instructing peasants to smelt steel in backyard furnaces. I wish we could afford to ride on those bullet trains, they are so shiny and fast.