We had another uncomfortable night in our Bifengxia hotel, followed by a very early start this morning. We have to drive all the way back to Chengdu (~2 hours) this morning to catch a flight for Shanghai. It might have made more sense to spend the night in Chengdu, instead of Bifengxia.
Everyone is getting very tired. I know that I’m feeling very cranky today.
Shanghai’s is a city of contrasts. There are scores upon scores of skyscrapers everywhere, as in most major Chinese cities, but there is still a bit of human scale left to the place. For one, there are lots more trees and greenery. Some of the buildings date back to the time of the European and American concessions, so the architecture is very familiar to our Western eyes. (For those who don’t know, the “concessions” that the West extracted from China in the mid-1800s is a shameful part of our history.)
Sadly, like other Chinese cities, the smog is overwhelming and the streets are clogged with cars. Our hotel was a pleasant surprise. We are staying at the Ritz-Carlton. I feel decidedly underdressed for such an upmarket hotel. The rooms are beautiful and we have a panoramic view of the city.
Unfortunately, we don’t have much time to spend in our room. We can only throw our suitcases in the closet and have a very rushed dinner “on our own”. Then, we hop back onto the bus again and are driven out to the Expo site.
The Expo is on both sides of the Huangpu River. We had to take a small ferry across the river to reach the various countries’ buildings. Once the sun went down, the Expo site becomes a fairy land of colored lights.
The lines for the important countries were impossibly long for the short period of time that we had. So, we skipped the most popular country buildings and went into the smaller countries’ exhibits, instead. One of them was Lithuania’s, which was good fun. We sat there, had a Lithuanian beer (excellent), and just talked.
After walking around for a few hours, we just ran out of the steam. Even though the Expo was supposed to stay open until midnight, most exhibits started shutting down around 9:30 PM. The Caribbean exhibit was closed by 9 PM. At that point, we decided to leave.
Since we were close to a subway line, it made sense to take the subway back to our hotel. I’m so glad that we did. The metro was beautiful and everything was signposted in Chinese and English, making it was extremely easy to navigate. The ticket price was a bargain, too,only 4 Yuan a piece (~60¢). The other nice aspect of taking the subway was that we got back to the hotel quickly. I think that the trip back took about 10 minutes, as opposed to more than 45 minutes on the surface streets.
Actually, it probably took us more time to walk from the metro stop to our hotel because we kept taking photos of the street. All the trees were lit by lights and many of the building were dramatically illuminated, as well. It was a lovely walk home.
