Shanghai, Day 1
Yesterday I went exploring around Shanghai. In my previous visits, i'd always been to the same places and parts of the city, so I wanted to link up with those places and then explore out into the rest of the city. So, with that in mind I first walked over to Sun-Yatsen park (中山公园), about 2 miles away, and then ate at the same jiaozi place across the street from the hotel that I'd eaten at in May. then, I bought a subway pass and jumped on the train down to the people's square(人民广场). From there, I walked down Tibet road (西藏南路) toward what lonely planet had described as 'Old Shanghai.'
Old shanghai, it turns out, meant the traditional sort of shikumen buildings (石窟门) that were the ubiquitous form of housing through most of chinese history, but have ended up getting replaced by more modern multistory apartment buildings. Similar to the Hutongs of Beijing, Shanghai's linongs (里弄) tend to be where most of your 'everday' lower and middle class people live. As such, it tends to be much busier and livelier than the fancy multistory apartment buildings that seem to replace them. It is also that liveliness that makes them fun to visit - seeing all the little shops and restaraunts or people hawking things in the street makes for a much different and more engaging experience than say, going through a mall where every store is its own little world.
As I wandered around, I found myself at a Taoist temple called baiyunguan (白云观 ) which had apparently just finished a major celebration or ceremony of some sort prior to my arrival. Unlike the temple I'd described in Hong Kong, this one was formulaic, but still impressive. It had huge carvings of the Main Taoist deities, and walls full of minor immortals. I took a bunch of pictures, which I will upload them onto flickr at some point. Probably after I've made them look better in photoshop - it was raining and getting dark, so they're pretty bad quality. After exploring around the temple some and watch them rearrange and put everything away after the ceremony, I wandered out and back into the linongs.
One place that I particularly liked yesterday was a pair of buildings that were, for lack of a better word, bazaars. The first one I wandered into on a whim, and it was full of little booths selling animals - birds, turtles, crickets, and fish mostly, along with their assorted cages, food, toys, etc. the bazaar must have been about the size of a basketball court, but was divided up into lanes so small two people could not pass each other without turning sideways. between the lanes were small booths. The booths were not actually all the same size: in the the smallest the seller could probably sit in the middle and touch all four walls without moving, if said walls didn't have whatever they were selling hanging from every square inch. The largest, usually situated along the exterior walls of the building, were large enough that customers (maybe 3 or 4 at a time, in the biggest) could stand inside with the sellers.
I found the animal bazaar quite a lot of fun. I can't imagine trying to choose what pet to buy there, though. I ended up wandering out and down the road to another one, this time focused on everything else: booths there ranged from cell phones to sink faucets and clothes. At this point, it was really starting to get dark outside, and the streets were full of people heading home for work. As I was not entirely certain where I was, I decided it would be better to try to head home earlier rather than later, so that if I got lost I could ask for directions and not just find myself wandering around shanghai aimlessly in the middle of the night.
Getting home on the train i noticed that the line was indeed open to the stop only a half mile from where i'm staying, and so I took the train there. I got out of the train stop, and asked for directions to the intersection near the apartment, and headed off. Unlike the linongs, which were packed with people heading home, the area where i'm staying was fairly deserted - the few people that I saw were in auto and metalworking shops, and each had a family eating dinner on a folding card table in the middle of the shop while watching a little 10" TV in the corner. A rather dull suburban feeling came over me.
Across the street from the entrance to the development that I'm staying in is a street with a number of restaurants - I stopped for some little snacks to eat for dinner (totaling a whopping 9元， or $1.25) and went home. Predator was on TV, so I went to bed.
Today, my legs were sore, and so i didn't do much of interest, just hung around and read, and watched what seemed to be a mini-marathon of Journey to the West. If you've ever heard of the Monkey King, he's the 'trickster hero' of that story, and The Monkey King is often used to refer to both the character and the whole story. Both have become main staples of east asian lore - now the character and bits of the story appear even in video games and anime (Dragonball Z is actually based on the story, with goku as 孙悟空).
Tomorrow, I'm going to start the job search, and then go explore some more.
Old shanghai, it turns out, meant the traditional sort of shikumen buildings (石窟门) that were the ubiquitous form of housing through most of chinese history, but have ended up getting replaced by more modern multistory apartment buildings. Similar to the Hutongs of Beijing, Shanghai's linongs (里弄) tend to be where most of your 'everday' lower and middle class people live. As such, it tends to be much busier and livelier than the fancy multistory apartment buildings that seem to replace them. It is also that liveliness that makes them fun to visit - seeing all the little shops and restaraunts or people hawking things in the street makes for a much different and more engaging experience than say, going through a mall where every store is its own little world.
As I wandered around, I found myself at a Taoist temple called baiyunguan (白云观 ) which had apparently just finished a major celebration or ceremony of some sort prior to my arrival. Unlike the temple I'd described in Hong Kong, this one was formulaic, but still impressive. It had huge carvings of the Main Taoist deities, and walls full of minor immortals. I took a bunch of pictures, which I will upload them onto flickr at some point. Probably after I've made them look better in photoshop - it was raining and getting dark, so they're pretty bad quality. After exploring around the temple some and watch them rearrange and put everything away after the ceremony, I wandered out and back into the linongs.
One place that I particularly liked yesterday was a pair of buildings that were, for lack of a better word, bazaars. The first one I wandered into on a whim, and it was full of little booths selling animals - birds, turtles, crickets, and fish mostly, along with their assorted cages, food, toys, etc. the bazaar must have been about the size of a basketball court, but was divided up into lanes so small two people could not pass each other without turning sideways. between the lanes were small booths. The booths were not actually all the same size: in the the smallest the seller could probably sit in the middle and touch all four walls without moving, if said walls didn't have whatever they were selling hanging from every square inch. The largest, usually situated along the exterior walls of the building, were large enough that customers (maybe 3 or 4 at a time, in the biggest) could stand inside with the sellers.
I found the animal bazaar quite a lot of fun. I can't imagine trying to choose what pet to buy there, though. I ended up wandering out and down the road to another one, this time focused on everything else: booths there ranged from cell phones to sink faucets and clothes. At this point, it was really starting to get dark outside, and the streets were full of people heading home for work. As I was not entirely certain where I was, I decided it would be better to try to head home earlier rather than later, so that if I got lost I could ask for directions and not just find myself wandering around shanghai aimlessly in the middle of the night.
Getting home on the train i noticed that the line was indeed open to the stop only a half mile from where i'm staying, and so I took the train there. I got out of the train stop, and asked for directions to the intersection near the apartment, and headed off. Unlike the linongs, which were packed with people heading home, the area where i'm staying was fairly deserted - the few people that I saw were in auto and metalworking shops, and each had a family eating dinner on a folding card table in the middle of the shop while watching a little 10" TV in the corner. A rather dull suburban feeling came over me.
Across the street from the entrance to the development that I'm staying in is a street with a number of restaurants - I stopped for some little snacks to eat for dinner (totaling a whopping 9元， or $1.25) and went home. Predator was on TV, so I went to bed.
Today, my legs were sore, and so i didn't do much of interest, just hung around and read, and watched what seemed to be a mini-marathon of Journey to the West. If you've ever heard of the Monkey King, he's the 'trickster hero' of that story, and The Monkey King is often used to refer to both the character and the whole story. Both have become main staples of east asian lore - now the character and bits of the story appear even in video games and anime (Dragonball Z is actually based on the story, with goku as 孙悟空).
Tomorrow, I'm going to start the job search, and then go explore some more.
posted by Me at 12:53 AM
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