This post is coming to you from behind the Great Firewall. Luckily for me, I’m staying with Yao’s friend, Yuming, and he has a VPN that lets us still access things like Facebook and Google.
Yesterday, Yao and I got up early and left to get xiao long bao (soup dumplings). These are by far my favorite food item I’ve gotten on the trip so far. I’m a fan of the pan-fried ones over boiled. Yao says that Shanghai is the only place he’s been to that has good fried XLBs.
We hopped on the subway and headed to Tianzifang. It’s a renovated residential area with arts and crafts stores. Despite the modern stores, it still has a traditional feel with its classic architecture.
Tianzifang
For lunch, we headed to the Google office in Pudong. It’s on the 60th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center, giving it a great view of the Pearl Tower. After eating, we headed to Nanjing Road and stopped by the Fairmont Peach Hotel, originally the Cathay Hotel. During the early 20th century, it was regarded as the most prestigious hotel in Shanghai and roomed many international celebrities.
Next we headed to the Bund for an iconic photo of Pudong (main picture). Apparently, I look like someone famous because as we were walking along the waterfront I was approached by some women to have my photo taken with them.
Paparazzi trying to get some action
After posing for some photos, we walked back to Nanjing road to look at the shops and find some weird candy Yao was looking for. We went into the No. 1 Shanghai food store. By No.1 I don’t mean the best food store in Shanghai. Back in the day, government mandated how things were sold and created separate department-like stores for each type of good. So there was one store for food, another for clothing, and so on. Each branch was given a number which was representative of its size.
As we left the store we were approached by a street vendor who wanted to sell us some fake watches. I had never shopped for fake goods so I thought I’d give it a try. We were led through a dark alley, through a small door, up some steps barely big enough for my feet, and into someone’s home. At first, I was pretty sketched out, but the room with the goods was like any normal store. I’m not really that good at knowing which fakes are the good ones so I decided not to buy anything.
We continued walking along Nanjing road and bought some crafts from a peddler. Out of no where, a man came and tried to snatch the goods out of the sellers hands and pushed him out of the way. Apparently this is how they discourage illegally selling goods on the street. We followed the man for a bit and any time a seller saw him they ran off like frightened children into the alleys. At first it was kind of funny, but I began to feel bad when one lady tried to get her goods back. This is obviously how she makes a living and supports herself.
Up until this point I was wondering where all of the 14 million people in Shanghai were. None of the subway trips had been very full and I didn’t think there was an extraordinary number of people on the streets. That changed on the subway back to Yuming’s place. The terminal was packed with people and we could barely get into one of the subway cars.
Later in the night we headed out to a small Japanese bar/restaurant to meet up with some of Yao’s high school friends and have a few too many drinks. I was able to find this funny sign in the bathroom:
We have one more full day in Shanghai before we leave for Tokyo on Monday.
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