Welcome to Communist China

Shanghai

At the Shangri-la, even the teaspoons are well dressed.

Shanghai, along the Bund.

The craptacular "Bund Sightseeing Tunnel."

An oversized needle thing, Shanghai.

A public fitness space in Hangzhou - the perfect clothes line.

A causeway across the West Lake, Hangzhou.

A bridge, a garden, Hangzhou.

A view across the West Lake to downtown Hangzhou.

That heading is what I thought, sarcastically, upon visiting the gleaming, mall-tastic Pudong New Area in Shanghai. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

My China was as follows:

For starters, don’t fly with China Eastern. They’re shonky. On our flight from Hong Kong to Hangzhou, the top of my left armrest broke off. The one on my right was held together with duct tape. They’re shonky.

Something that wasn’t shonky was our hotel in Hangzhou, the one and only Shangri-La. It was classic fabulousness incarnate, and my first 5-star experience. By way of example, we gave them our dirty undies to wash, and they came back neatly folded in a silk-lined basket. That’s something I could get used to.

Our first day was spent exploring Hangzhou. Hangzhou is regarded as one of the three most beautiful cities in China, and was declared by Marco Polo to be “the finest and the noblest [city] in the world“. Its centerpiece is the West Lake, a massive man-made lake surrounded by gardens, dotted with islands and pavilions, and crossed by many bridges and causeways. It certainly is beautiful. But before hitting the lake, we made a pilgrimage to the university Richard studied and lived at a couple of years ago. We saw his apartment building, the Educational Supermarket (it really is called that) and the big Mao statue. Next we went to Trustmart, a big supermarket selling live frogs and turtles, if that tickles your fancy. A short break from walking later, we explored the lake, talking a walk on a causeway with lovely gardens, and thus crossing the entire lake. It was a gorgeous walk, though the throngs of tour groups made it a little squishy sometimes. That evening we enjoyed a dinner of Hangzhouese cuisine at the hotel’s restaurant, followed by cocktails at the bar, thus furthering the fabulous expensiveness of the trip.

The next day, we went for a daytrip to Shanghai, two hours away by train. After much confusion in Hangzhou station, we found ourselves on a decent train that looked like a bargain-basement shinkansen. The only thing of note on the train was the guy sitting behind us who thought that scrolling through every ringtone on his phone would be a polite way to pass the time. Tool.

And then… Shanghai! After a food court lunch, we found our way to The Bund, thanks to Richard’s mad phat navigation skillz. The Bund makes for a lovely stroll, with the grand European buildings (now banks, mostly) on the left and the hyper-modern Pudong New Area across the river on the right. We crossed the river on the fancy new Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which may be the most impressive waste of funds I’ve ever seen (except, perhaps, the South Australian Wine Centre). Basically, you take a little tram/monorail thing through a tunnel and enjoy a gloriously over-the-top sound and light show, all lasers and seizure-inducing flashes. It’s craptacular. Emerging on the other side of the river, we wandered around a huge mall and discovered that Dairy Queen is not as good as its many pop-culture references would suggest. Finally, we wandered back through the craptacular tunnel, through the crowded streets to a subway station, and endured the most ridiculously overcrowded train ride of my life back to South Shanghai train station. We bought our tickets back to Hangzhou and realized that we had “standing class” tickets. So we stood up for the two-hour trip back to Hangzhou, whilst people pushed around us to get hot water for their pot noodles. Fun! Or not.

Richard may not like to hear this, but I didn’t really like Shanghai much. I don’t enjoy cities for the sake of being cities, in the sense that crowds, traffic and noise don’t impress me. And from the few hours we had to see it, Shanghai felt like just a Big City (Bund and big European buildings notwithstanding). I wouldn’t rank it among the few Great Cities I’ve been to; New York, Montreal, Bangkok, Tokyo, and (as I was to discover) Hong Kong. Nevertheless, it was worth the trip to see it.

Hangzhou, on the other hand, is much lovelier, and on our last day there, we had a relaxing wander about town. We explored some gorgeous gardens around the West Lake, returned to Trustmart for supplies of Western (read: not Japanese) toothpaste, and found a really cool night market. The market was a little more classy than the usual, as in, not trashy, as in, we couldn’t afford anything much. Still, Richard got a hanko of his name in kanji, and there was a shop selling jars of dried frogs (for all your dessicated amphibian needs, I suppose).

The next day, it was off to Honkers.