We arrived to Shanghai at around midday and it was surprising to see the contrast between grey, laid-back Xi'an and hectic, big city Shanghai.
We checked into our centrally located hostel, the decent Blue Mountain on the Bund (www.bmhostel.com) and tried to get our bearings.
We dropped off our stuff and already started exploring. Thinking we were walking towards Shanghai's famed waterway, we walked west until we didn't feel like going any farther. We walked back to our hostel and decided to actually look at a map this time, and realized we had been heading in the wrong direction.
This time we went east and within 10 minutes were face to face with Shanghai's impressive and famous skyline located across the Huangpu river in Shanghai's Pudong district.
After snapping numerous pics of the interesting architecture such as the oriental pearl tower, the spaceship looking tower I thought looked cool, yet Josh found tacky; and the Shanghai world financial center measuring 492m and looking like a giant bottle opener.
On our side of the Huangpu river is Shanghai's famed Bund. The Bund was the city's old wall street and many of its classical buildings were built in the early 1900s by foreign powers such as England, France, the US, Germany and Russia. In the 1920s, Shanghai was called the Paris of the east for its beautiful architecture and cosmopolitan feel.
Once the communists came into power in the late 40s, Shanghai faded into commercial obscurity. The impressive skyscrapers we were looking at across the Huangpu had only been conceptualized and built starting in the 90s, to invigorate the economy and reinstating Shanghai as the economic capital of China.
Shanghai is now the commercial center of China; its most modern and avant-garde city; and its largest with over 18 million residents.
After admiring the contrast between colonial and contemporary, we headed back to the hostel before grabbing a delicious Shanghainese meal and returning to the Bund to admire the impressive skyline at night.
Our hostel was located just off East Nanjing road, the wide pedestrian shopping area with enough lights and people to make Times Square jealous. During our time in Shanghai, I couldn't tell you how many times we walked up and down that street, wondering how it's possible for there to be a Starbucks at every corner and ignoring the countless touts offering watches, purses or sexy lady massages (a known extortion scheme in Shanghai).
Other than our walks down East Nanjing and multiple visits to the Bund, we didn't do too much in Shanghai.
We did walk through People's Square and I took a few hours to wander through Old Town with its quintessential Chinese tea house and architecture, but it was overrun with tourists (as many foreign as local), which made it difficult to navigate the sometimes narrow streets.
On our second night we met Ed, a Brit living in New Zealand who was giving a speech at a conference in a nearby province. He joined us for a walk to Shanghai's French concession. The French concession was the former neighborhood of the French colonial community reflected in its elegant buildings and layout. We tried to find an affordable restaurant in the Xintiandi area, but the European restaurants and Italian and French fashion houses glaring snobbishly at us left us with no satisfying options.
Instead we ate at a fast-food styled Chinese place and bought 50 cent beers while playing a game we thought up called Shanghai Die.
A simple game: one person rolls the die, the others call a number, whoever is the closest to the number called without going over wins. The loser has to drink for the number of seconds their number is off by. If one person guesses correctly, the others have to drink for 5 seconds.
Simple yet effective.
The following evening Fredrika and Camilla arrived to Shanghai following their 38-hour train ride from Chengdu. We went to Captain's bar which offers great views of Pudong at night and has the cheapest drinks anywhere on the Bund. After we played more Shanghai Die, an instant classic.
Helinä arrived the next night and we thought it would be nice to go to Pudong to the Ritz Carleton Hotel to get beautiful views of the Bund and the oriental pearl tower. We all dressed in our finest clothes and made our way there. The waiter told us to get a seat on the outside terrace we needed to spend a minimum of 400¥ (66 CAD) each and considering my budget is 50$/day, no view is worth that. Instead we went across the street to the Shangri-la hotel and had a drink on its modest 36th floor, at Jade on the 36th restaurant and lounge.
Feeling aimless we went back to the hostel for a quiet evening. As soon as we got back, a former bartender at the hostel invited us to have drinks with her because it was her birthday. She was already pretty wasted and was happy to pour us shots of vodka.
Before we even had time to settle into our chairs, a German guy told us he was a promoter at a club called Muse and that if we went before 11 we would get in free and drink free all night.
Sounded too good to be true.
It turns out that promoters often recruit foreigners (mainly white people) to enter clubs and drink for free to increase the party vibe. Chinese patrons generally just sit and spend copious amounts of money on premium vodkas and champagne. They use white people to get the dance floor started and to hype the Chinese.
While we weren't explicitly told to do so, we started jumping around and dancing like there was no tomorrow, and as promised, the vodka and tequila flowed all night.
My Gagnam style dance drew rave reviews from our fellow Chinese party-goers.
We slept in past our noon check-out time and then showed Helinä the Bund and walked down East Nanjing one last time. Winnie had arrived in Shanghai and paid us a visit at our hostel an hour before we left for the train station.
Our next stop was Huangshan or the yellow mountains, known as one of the most iconic of all of China's mountains and providing some of the most spectacular scenery China has to offer.
Winnie had told us that like Huashan, there are hundreds of thousands of stairs: my knees said no but my heart said hell's yes!
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