I thought 15 days in China would be more than enough for me, but on this final day and pretty much every day, I longed for more time in every city!
The typhoon died down significantly on this day, and the majority of everything opened back up. I was slightly paranoid and anxious that our flight back to Osaka would have be cancelled if the typhoon got any worse. Turns out Typhoon Dolphin was headed to the Kansai Region next 🤦♂️!
Here's what we did on our last full day in Shanghai/China!
We started the day with Hong Kong Char Siu for breakfast! I know very unorthodox meal for the first meal of the day, but Cole never had Char Siu before and we agreed to skip lunch, so we can treat ourselves to a fancy Peking Duck dinner! I had it the day before, but I will not complain having it two days in a row!
After "breakfast" we walked back to Yuyuan Old street area for the Yuyuan Garden. If you ever go to Shanghai, please book Yuyuan Garden in advance, so you can kill three birds with one stone: Garden, Old Street, and Taoist Temple.
Here are some photos I took of the walk to the Yuyuan area:
It did not occur to me when I was in Shanghai, but as I am writing this log, the more I think Chicago is an accurate comparison or U.S. equivalent to Shanghai!
We had to make a quick stop for some Mixue!
The walk only took about 20 minutes, and then we were in the garden. Here are the photos:
Japanese adapted from the Chinese, so I think it's more commendable to give the flowers to China, but both are great!
Boy was that movie trash! Jackie Chan is one of one though!
Enough of my side comments, enjoy these photos:
I bought this one because I thought the panda looked so much like me 😅. Back to the photos:
The garden also had an exhibition of different rooms that were pretty interesting too:
I thought the Yuyuan Garden was pretty small, but there's a lot sights packed in there!
I kept getting stares with all the panda merchandise I was wearing. Why did everyone at Yuyuan Garden have to be so judgmental? I guess I really am Cody Maverick from Surf's Up. I get chills from this scene every time!
"Cody's me bro, let me be me!"
After Yuyuan Garde, we taxied to the French concession area for Tianzifang and Wukang Mansion. Tianzifang is famous for its maze of narrow alleyways and boutique shops! Wukang Building is famous for its wedge-shaped look. Here are a few photos:
The Wukang Mansion is very reminiscent of the Flatiron Building in San Francisco and New York. After a quick internet search, New York came first, San Francisco followed, and then Shanghai! I guess Western culture is really the center of the world 😂
They probably just kept this phone box here to match with the aesthetic. Insane to think about how far technology came in the past 30 years because according to Google, "phone boxes were at its peak between 1995-1999." I do not even know how to work a spin dial phone, but that's probably the majority of my generation! 😂
After walking the French Concession area, we decided to go to Tian An 1000 Trees. It's a mall and apartment complex with you guessed it, a thousand trees or more. On our way to the taxi pickup we stumbled upon what I thought was a prison, but was the Shanghai Library instead!
The taxi ride was about 20 minutes to Tian An 1000 Trees.
I remember before I dropped out (tested out) of high school, one of my junior year projects was to create a diorama of a utopia. At the time OpenAI had an imagine feature on ChatGPT, so I had to ChatGPT illustrate me a sample render. I kid you not every drawing had trees or greenery on rooftops like Tian An 1000 Trees.
Tian An 1000 Trees is like a real life version of the "Society If Meme":
That's long a shot, but I need to rebuild that GPA!
We went inside the mall at Tian An 1000 after snapping a few photos from the outside. There was this cool chain-mail or 3D printed sculpture and an Aldi:
There was not really much we could do and book within the same day, so we decided to head back towards our hotel area and go to North Bund Green Park!
You can not even see the top or the rest of Shanghai Tower. I hope whoever went up to the observatory got a refund 🤣.
From North Bund Green Park, we were starving and went straight to our expensive $54 ($27 split) Peking Duck dinner!
Definitely the fanciest restaurant I dined at, and we or I did not dress for the occasion at all. I walked in with my panda backpack and panda clip, and never felt so out of place. I felt like a customizable character during a cut-scene in a video game 💀
This is Cole's 5-minute video of the chef prepping the Peking Duck!
The precision and attention to detail the chef operates in as he slices up the duck is admirably astonishing!
I still cannot wrap my head that this was $54. For the price of two Caniac combos at Raising Canes excluding tax, I got an exquisite meal with premium service that I did not have to tip for!
They gave us the whole duck with every ounce of meat in it. Cole and I demolished our duck slices, then moved onto the other parts on the bottom left. We were hungry and ate without thinking, but I quickly realized I was about to eat the duck's head, so I immediately stopped .
We ordered some dessert after finishing the duck.
No dessert was good on that platter. It was pretty expensive $13, and I was super disappointed. They say it's an acquired taste, but I think that's just gaslighting 🤣.
The dessert was so bad we had to make another Mixue run after dinner!
Mixue is great and I will forever miss the cheap prices in China and the most joyful jingle.
Take a listen to this:
Sure it's just a Chinese adaption of "Oh! Susanna", but that's just cultural appreciation at its finest!
After the final Mixue run, we went back to Lujiazui to see the Shanghai skyscrapers one last time.
The typhoon and weather really soured over the Shanghai leg of this China tour, and I am still pretty angry by it. However, I am very satisfied with what we did do under our circumstances because that was still quite a lot. Shanghai is great, and I have a strong feeling in my heart that this will not be the last time I will be walking these streets. The question is when though?
I will never be this young again exploring China! 5 cities in 15 day and probably close to 500K total steps, I gained so much insight and newfound knowledge that hopefully I was able to transcribe through these logs. Thank you all for reading my China log series, I spent a lot of time writing these, and I hope you enjoyed this trip as much as I did! I will leave you with two of the last photos I took of Shanghai!
