Shanghai

I’ve had a week in Shanghai getting a bit of a feel for China and having a look around. I also got a new wheel built for my bike and got swindled out of some cash (those aren’t related!). Here’s the story.

Most of my time was spent wandering around the city. On the first day this involved checking out the Bund (the waterfront area) and through the touristy bit to Shanghai Museum and back to the hostel.

Here are some photos up till the museum:

Lonely Planet raves about Shanghai Museum, saying it’s a must-see. I was pretty disappointed really. Maybe it’s just not the sort of museum I’m into. It was all about showing off all these old relics, rather than really telling a story. Some items were nice though.

How’s this for a wine vessel!?

After I left the museum I was wandering through the People’s Park, and I got approached by a young group of chinese people around 20 years old (3 girls and a guy) to take their photo. I didn’t think anything of it, and then they struck up a conversation. This was a bit of a shock to me after Japan (where that wouldn’t have happened), but I thought it might just be what happens- I’d heard that you sometimes get people trying to practice their english.. Anyway, they seemed harmless enough – one of them was supposedly a local and the others were students visiting from Chengdu (out West)- a big week-long holiday had just finished, so this again sounded plausible.
Eventually they mentioned they were going to a tea ceremony and did I want to come along.. I figured that was ok and would be interesting so said yes. The actual ceremony was quite interesting and fun. There was a price-list that looked reasonable for the actual ceremony- maybe $NZ10 or 20 and I was happy with that.
The scam should’ve been really obvious to me when the tea ceremony finished and the bill came. Two of the girls had decided to “buy” some tea which considerably raised the cost. Then of course it was suggested that the two students shouldn’t pay, leaving the cost on 3 of us. Weirdly they the students then offered to buy me some tea to say thank-you, hmm. Anyway, I was still coming to terms with the change from the Japanese Yen to the Chinese Yuan and only realised that I’d forked over about $NZ100 when I was halfway back to the hostel.
It was a rookie error really, and I felt very annoyed with myself and frustrated by it once I worked out I’d been had. I thought about not writing this up, but who knows, it might stop some other visitor from making the stooopid mistake I did! I’m not sure what would’ve happened if I’d been forceful and only paid for my part of the bill. Following some research it sounds like its a highly organised operation, and when I walked through the park a few days later I had several groups try and initiate conversations in exactly the same way as before.
But in the end, I did quite enjoy the ceremony, I learnt a valuable lesson (don’t trust anyone), and got a little bit of tea out of it!
Anyway, here are some photos from it.

One highlight afterwards was passing a survey equipment shop…

I was mainly on foot around Shanghai- in Nagasaki I discovered cracks in the rim of my rear wheel. So I found a great shop (recommended through Eleanor Moseman) called Chain’s Sprockets. They were amazing- built a great wheel, and did a really good service of the bike for a really really good price. They stock a big range of really good cycling gear, so if you need anything in Shanghai, I definitely recommend looking them up. Kaiyuan, the manager, speaks great English and is really keen to help.

Here are more photos from my wanders around Shanghai, especially the older part.

Part of Shanghai is called the French Concession, it’s where the French were based from the mid 19th-20th centuries. I’d recommend reading the wikipedia page for more info..

Anyway, it’s all (relatively) wide tree-lined streets and has nice cafes etc. I found some really good coffee there, even if one coffee cost more than my bed in the hostel that night! I’d recommend checking out Café del Volcán if anyone’s looking for good coffee!

Even Shanghai has hipsters on fixies! I love the contrasts in transport methods in this photo:

And some more photos around Shanghai:

I wish I could sleep on the back of Indie like this! The future of cycle touring maybe?

The rest of the week was taken up chilling at the hostel trying to get over a cold (that I’ve still got down in Guilin). I also did a reccie to the train station to work out the process of taking my bike on the train, but more about that in the next post! I’m not in Guilin, 1200km SW of Shanghai, and the next post will cover how I got here!