Cheese croquettes, at last

(Continued from Guangzhou).

Shanghai is hands down my favourite city in China, and I was lucky enough welcome in 2008 there (actually, I slept through the whole shebang, but I was there). Leaving my scholarship at SCUT and Guangzhou’s lovely weather only to arrive in temperatures of a few degrees C, and suddenly a tourist, was hard. I waited in a forty minute queue for a licensed taxi and wound up with a fierce betel-nut-munching woman who would wind down her window every minute or so and spit the debris of her snack onto the freeway. She got me to the hotel and charged me only a marginally inflated price though, so who’s complaining?

Dear old Mum was waiting for me at our hotel having recently completed her own tour of China, and knowing my needs well, led me to the first available source of cheese. This was at one of the several Ajisen noodle chains along Nanjing Rd (shopping Mecca of the Mainland). Like most eateries in China, this joint typified the idea of 热闹 — that places should be hot, noisy and crowded. The faux Japanese decor was equally distracting.

Am I the only one who thinks these sumos aren’t just wrestling?

It took me longer to get used to the cold (cold for a Melburnian, anyway) weather and being stripped of my international student status than I would have liked, but I enjoyed being back in Shanghai’s mercilessly busy environment. Mum and I did a few requisite touristy things, such as walking along the Bund and posing in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower.

An example of Mum’s excellent camera technique. Arty, isn’t it?

We also visited the Yu Yuan Gardens, where its resident cat (below) attracted more attention than any of the botany.

I blame the base turn my humour took on bad aeroplane food.

It wasn’t long before I needed to use the internet, but thankfully Mum had already tracked down an internet/gaming place “by following some nerdy teenagers” (genius!) After perusing our passports, it turned out I was underage by all of 8 months, but I was allowed to “accompany” my mother while she used her machine. Didn’t bother me — I got to take photos of the joint in all its shady glory.

During our four day stay we did plenty of shopping, and having one of the most famous retail streets in Asia on our doorstep didn’t exactly assist in moderation. The fact that we were there during a few days of public holidays meant at times escalators broke down and we could barely move through the streets, but I love that kind of thing (until it started getting hard to breathe in those department stores).

01/01/08. Close to midnight on Nanjing Rd.

We still had two weeks in Taiwan to go, but I knew I’d miss Shanghai terribly once we left. 

Maybe next year, when revision sheets stop coming out of my ears.