Out of all the cities in China I visited, Shanghai is the city I can see myself living in the most. It feels the most Westernized I'd say. Everything is more spread out except The Bund at night , and livable. It makes sense that Shanghai is the most Westernized city because it was the biggest treaty port back in the 1800s. I will go further into my 10th grade AP World History: Modern analysis later, but here's how I got here.
Flying. We took an 8:35 AM flight from Chongqing Airport (CKG) and landed around 11 AM. If your portable batteries comply with security, the process is seamless. Fortunately, my other portable chargers were confiscated in Beijing, so I was in and out of security in less than 2 minutes. Look at my boarding pass!
Unfortunately they were closed, and I could not get a coffee in time before boarding the plane.
I did not want to squish my panda backpack, so I carried it in front of me as my personal item. Here's a selfie:
God forbid a 19-year-old Asian boy protect the integrity of his panda backpack!
Yet they give us meals in panda packaging, the double standard 🤦♂️
We were in the taxi to the hotel in less than 10 minutes from deplaning. Chinese airports are so efficient.
Maybe the uncanniness stems from the clean spotless highway in this shot. I have never seen those in America. I am used to seeing liter, trash, and even a washing machine on the highway!
We got to the hotel around 12:30 PM, and to my surprise we were able to check into our room! Cole dropped his bags and headed out on his own, I had to stay behind to cancel and rebook my AirBnBs for my upcoming Korea trip. One of my friends bailed on the trip, and I had to cancel on the day or else I would be charged. That costed me about a good hour, but staying in the air conditioning was nice. I headed out around 2 PM and walked around the area.
That comment did not age well over the next few days...
This was from Nanjing Road. China is really marketing Yang Hansen. They are doing too much for a guy that is barely getting minutes.
I don't hate Yang Hansen, I think he's eventually going to be great in the NBA, but he needs to see the floor first. Hopefully he gets his own respective "Linsanity" moment.
I met up with Cole for lunch, and we headed to Yuyuan Old Street from there.
We had to walk a little for this meal because getting food along The Bund is very expensive. It is not as expensive as San Francisco though!
Before heading to Yuyuan Old Street, I needed to make a pit stop for:
I am starting to think these "old streets" are just a scam. The architecture is cool, but everything else is just overpriced gentrified trash.
Right by Yuyuan Old Street, there is the Taoist Temple, which was pretty sweet. Like the Lama Temple, it's a functioning temple, people come to pray and set curses on people 🤣. Here are the photos:
I definitely should have done more research into the history of China and all their temples before coming. Cole took a whole course on Chinese history at Kyoto University, so he was definitely more interested and had a more enriching experience.
If there's no caption with the photos, it means "I have no clue what this is, but I thought it was cool."
We exited out the Taoist Temple, and walked around the Yuyuan area a bit more. We wanted to go to the garden, but like Beijing, we had to buy tickets a day in advance. Here are more photos around the Yuyuan area:
Since we needed a day advance registration for almost everything in Shanghai, the heat was picking up, and Cole had to run a load of laundry, we decided to head back to the hotel.
Our hotel was on The Bund, so we had a very scenic walk back.
I did not even notice this was an immigration port, I just took a photo 🤣. There is no bad view on The Bund. I still prefer Hong Kong and Chongqing's skyline though. Shanghai's skyline is gold, Chongqing's platinum, and Hong Kong is diamond.
Here are more photos along The Bund:
Some history of the monument is that it commemorates the May 30th Movement of 1925, a pivotal labor and anti-imperialist movement sparked when police fired on Chinese demonstrators in Shanghai's International Settlement.
A little history, these European style buildings are here because China lost the Opium Wars. The British forced China to sign the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 and opened up Shanghai to foreign trade. The British came first, then the Americans and French settled in as well too. China was carved up into "spheres of influences", where Western powers and Japan took control of the trade and economy in different regions. The European style buildings on The Bund were a built during the peak of the foreign control era as Shanghai was and is still a powerhouse for Western banks and trading companies in Asia (i.e. HSBC - Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation).
The European buildings are really cool, and maybe next time I visit China, I can see their knock-off Paris 🤣.
Once we got back to the hotel, we just dozed off, and doom-scrolled until Shanghai started lighting up. In hindsight, I regret doing this, but I was so tired from Chongqing the day before, and I did not know the incoming typhoon would be that bad.
The hotel room was super luxurious and expensive! I think $187 a night, divide by two, $93 a night! 😬 Bad, but not terrible. If this was LA, I am looking easily over $300+ a night!
We went out for dinner after Cole's laundry finished. We had Xiaolongbao, we both forgot to take a photo, so just know the food was good!
After dinner, we decided to head back to The Bund for more photos and ride the ferry!
I love the lighting on this monument, this is supposed to symbolize the martyrs who died during the Opium Wars, the May Fourth Movement, and the Chinese Civil War.
I will give China credit that they maintain their memorials well. It really illustrates how much they appreciate and care about their people and soldiers. I remember walking the Land's End trail in San Francisco, and seeing how withered the USS San Francisco Memorial was a few years back. It angered me so much because those brave soldiers gave their lives for the U.S. and in return got a memorial with overgrown trees, rusted placards, and needles on the ground 🤦♂️.
Enough with my spiel, here are photos of me:
It was hot. Unbearably hot, but we did not pay to go to Shanghai just to sit in a hotel room. So I swallowed my dehydration (literally) and kept on trucking!
The lighting on the European buildings is phenomenal! It's so grand and beautiful!
I have more videos of how crowded it was on the DJI, I will share in the video, but The Bund and Nanjing Road was packed!
They say rubbing the balls on the charging bull gives you great wealth and fortune. It's not bull (pun intended). You can read for yourself here. All I have to say is that when I did it in New York back in 2020, my investments went up exponentially and the market was good, so I had to run it back and do it again!
Moving along, per the recommendation of my Shanghai friend, we decided to ride a ferry cruise!
I probably should have consulted my friend on which ferry to board because I think we paid for the more expensive one. I was looking more for a Star Ferry in Hong Kong experience!
On the ferry cruise, we met this young Middle-Eastern guy who got rich on the internet by selling insurance and now travels the world doing business deals. He tried to swoon us to buy into his lifestyle and start selling insurance 😂. He seemed pretty nice, but maybe next time, do not have, "Are you worried that AI will make your degree irrelevant and take your job?" in your pitch to STEM undergrad students. With all the money and "business deals" he closed, you would think he knows how to read a room 💀.
Any ways here are the photos I got on the ferry cruise!
The Shanghai Tower is much taller than the Oriental Pearl Tower, but from these angles, it's very hard to believe. Both impressive structures though.
After the ferry cruise, we called it a night, as we had to wake up early to catch the High Speed Rail Train to Hangzhou the next day!