We docked early Sunday morning at Shanghai. We were met by our Shanghai guide,Run, and escorted to our hotel, the Bund Hotel. We walked down Nanjing Street where the mall and shops are and headed to Bund Street. Bund Steet is like a promenade along the river. The weather was cold and overcast so the view across the river was hazy. The eastern side has the old buildings which are fabulous and the western side of the river is the all-new side with seriously tall buildings – in fact some of the tallest in the world.
Nanjing Road
view across river towards the east
We wanted to get some lunch and got a taxi to the Yu Garden Market area. There were many people there – it is a very large market area and well worth going to,with shops of all sorts and street food. We found a food hall in the centre and bought food there – luckily here there was a description in English. We bought pork and celery dumplings and some fried chicken strips – the dumplings were delicious with the celery flavour. When we sat down at a table,the man next to us went and got us chopsticks because we didn’t have them – very helpful – not many people speak any English at all so we get by with gestures like thumbs up and so on – we can’t complain though because we only know how to say hello and thanks so far.
market near YuYuan Gardens
food hall
We had wanted to go to the acrobatics show but couldn’t find out how to get tickets so we got a taxi to the place on the tourist map which said Shanghai Circus World. The tourist map is the only way we can get anywhere with taxi drivers because of our language barrier. We got two seats in the best section for that evening and they were good seats – second row in the central section. The show was amazing – definitely recommend going to it when in Shanghai. At times it was very delicate with rows of beautiful women spinning plates on sticks and doing gymnastics at the same time with fluorescent greens and blue lights and lovely Chinese music. Then it would become fast and performers would be jumping through hoops, making people stacks high intothe air and so on. One couple who were dressed in pale pink and white with flowing fabric did acrobatics high in the air with the woman hanging on the man by a piece of cloth,a foot or being carried in his arms -this was all with no attachment or anything to fall on to _ they were wonderful. Then came the fast and furious motorbikes in a large metal sphere with up to 6 motorbikes in the sphere at once !!!!! Definitely go to the Acrobatics Circus show when in Shanghai.
Before we went to the show,we decided to have a quick dinner and went to a nearby restaurant. No one spoke English, everything was in Chinese and there were nopictures to go by! The people there thought it wasvery funny and couldn’t stop laughing at us. So they got out their iphone and using a translater app, we were able to communicate -we found out that pork dumplings and noodles were on the menu so that is what we got!. The dumplings were made from scratch on the spot and then steamed outside the front door. The beef noodle soup arrived from the kitchen.Everything was delicious.
Chinese ladies making dumplings
