Monsoon
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2007
1
37
52
Trip End
Jul 24, 2007
Shanghai, China
Saturday, July 7, 2007
It's been unbelievably hot and humid here in Shanghai since we arrived on Wednesday, and now it's cooler and very very wet. It rained this afternoon, but it wasn't any old rain, it was like a monsoon: sudden and heavy. And Bill & I were outside with 1 umbrella, clutching our laundry and walking through rivers that had formed at the edges of the roads. We got very wet.
So.... Shanghai had been really interesting. Last night we ate at the Grand Hyatt in Pudong, on the 55th floor. Very memorable. Amazing views and lovely food. We also went to the observation deck on the 88th floor (glup) which was fastastic (aside from the loud, pushy Chinese tourists). In the middle of the building, you can look straight down from the 88th to the 56th floor, because it's hollow in the centre, with the Hyatt's guestrooms arranged around the outside - really spectacular.
We've also spent time walking along the Bund (which is much more interesting than I expected, perhaps partially due to my temporary separation from European buildings?) and shopping in very expensive (for China) little arty shops. This morning we went out to a place called Qibao, which used to be a little village, but has been engulfed by the suburbs of Shanghai, and someone decided to preserve the old buildings for tourism (unusual, since it seems the Chinese tend to buldoze anything old). So we strolled around the little streets and took a tiny boat ride along the green (water, not trees) canal. The Shanghai museum was fantastic - definitely the best museum I've been to recently (although the one in Xian was also good), and we also went to a museum of propaganda that displayed a number of posters from the cultural revolution, and denoucement posters, which were fascinating. It claims to be the only museum in the world with a collection like this, which I guess is partially due to politics, and also because many posters were destroyed in the 1970s and 1980s.
