Bright Lights, Big City

Tuesday after class we decided that we were sick of sitting in a classroom after 6 and a half hours and that we wanted to get out and do some more exploring. We have been given a list for one of our classes of 20 things to do in Shanghai, of which we need to complete 10 by the end of January. It’s sort of a fun way of getting us out and being rewarded for our adventures. We looked at the list and decided that we could easily knock off 4 or 5 in one trip to downtown Shanghai, so we hopped on a train and headed back to People’s Square where we were over the weekend. Turns out, you can walk from People’s Square down a pedestrian walkway called Nanjing Road that will take you all the way to the Bund (more details on that to follow).

Basically, Nanjing road is this huge commercial road full of big name stores from Sephora to Omega watches to Apple and everything in between. It is also full of street vendors trying to sell you their “unique” souvenirs for which you can practice your bargaining. We didn’t end up buying anything, but we got a good idea of what was out there.

The new friend we made along the way!

It was a really cool road to walk down, covering about 7 or 8 blocks and getting you closer to the river that leads into downtown. By walking this road, we covered one of the checklist items on our list, “walk from People’s Square to the Bund”. Also along this road was the Peace Hotel, of which we were told to “walk through the lobby” and take a picture. It ended up being this really historical hotel built hundreds of years ago with awesome artwork and historical features. A security guard was nice enough to take a group picture of us.

So with that checked off of our list, we kept walking and finally found the Bund. This is the area that you can instantly tell was built by Europeans. You could be walking through the streets of London if it weren’t for the huge skyscrapers across the river lit up in neon lights.

We hung out for a while along the bank of the river looking over into Shanghai and taking pictures with the classic background that you would see on a postcard. I even got asked to take a picture with a Chinese lady (check one off my China bucket list!). Well, I didn’t really get asked, she more just stood right next to me, put her arm around mine and said cheese, but I wasn’t complaining.
 

After checking out the scenery from across the river, we decided to check another thing off the list and take the ferry over to the actual city. It cost 2 yuan (about 30 cents) and took about 5 minutes total. Once we got there, we headed over to see the Pearl Tower, that big building with the lit up balls on it. It ended up costing a lot to go up into the building, so we stuck outside and took some pictures. It’s surrounded by a huge commercial area with malls and other things to see, but at that point we were tired from being in class and walking all that way and decided to call it a night. We definitely plan on going back and spending more quality time on Nanjing road and around the Pearl Tower to get our shop on!

Joe on the ferry

The Pearl Tower up close