Shanghai Part 1: First Impressions and The World Expo

Thursday May 20

I arrived, relatively comfortably, in the Shanghai Train Station just around 8am. As soon as I deboarded, I knew I was in the right place, as I was overwhelmed by the plastering of Expo 2010 signs everywhere I looked.  I guess it’s kind of a big deal here or something.

(Right outside the main train station)

I tried to navigate the bus system to get to my hostel near the Jing’an Temple in the west part of town, but even though the bus stops are announced in English, the one the hostel told me to get off at didn’t really exist, slash the woman who said she would tell me when to get off, left the bus before I did. So, I had to suck it up and go for the 10Y taxi to my hostel, the Le Tour Traveler’s Rest Youth Hostel.  Yup, it’s a “rest youth hostel” – not sure what else is implied by a place that you sleep in.  It’s a pretty nice place, fairly big space, but it was a bit pricey compared to my normal experience in China, completely due to the Expo.

I ended up sitting in the lobby for a while before my room was ready, and tried to plan out the things I would see in the next three days.  Lonely Planet has been so choc full of information, and I have been traveling so quickly, that I really didn’t have a chance to do much preparation before I got here. Around 11 I threw my bag in my room and set out for a quick breakfast of jiaozi (dumplings) before making my first stop to the Shanghai Museum.  I knew that I wasn’t going to be in the best mindset to do exploring today given my chronic lack of sleep and complete lack of understanding of the city, so I figured doing a museum should be a nice way to ease into the city.

The Shanghai Museum was one of the best museums I’ve been to period. China or otherwise.  It is situated smack in the middle of Shanghai in the People’s Square, conveniently located just a few minutes by Metro from my hostel.

(Ancient coins, look like lion teeth)

(Can be put on strings)

(Circa the International Settlement 19th c.)

(Notice the Chinese people who can't help but touch everything in museums)

(Sniffers things for tobacco substances)

(Jade - yup, it's bent like jello, sooo cool)

(So so intricate, it's about the size of my thumbnail)

(Hal of minority culture - lots of costumes)

(Tibetan head masks)

(More pottery)

(Really old wood sculpture, like 800 years)

(The sun came out! Remin Square)

(More flowers and people)

It is a four-floor, free to enter, cheap but wonderful audioguide museum. They had exhibits ranging from the history of coinage in China to antique ceramics, to bronze and calligraphy.  I think I spent nearly four hours in the museum and then another hour or so exploring the surrounding People’s Square. While I was sitting on a bench in the Square reading my LP book, two 30-something men just started staring at the book while I was looking at a map. After a few awkward seconds, I explained in broken Chinese that I was traveling and that this was a book with lots of information about China. They were amazed, and then proceeded to slowly pull out a camera.  Completely used to this by now, I took out my smile and we did a photo-op.

I headed back to the Le Tour and just hung out there the whole night, enjoying the company of new friends and hearing travel stories and stories about the Expo that I would attend the next day.  I called it an early night and headed to bed around 11 so that I’d be functional to wake up at 7 to meet up with Mike Wu for the Expo.

Friday May 21

The quote of the day for today is, without question, and very accurately so –  “hurry up and wait”.

We took a taxi to the Expo entrance gates and arrived at 8am, early enough to hopefully be one of the first 50,000 entries, who supposedly would receive a reservation ticket to the China Pavilion, the only one where you need a time slot reservation to enter.  I was really happy to be with Mike Wu, aside from not seeing him for a couple weeks now, he had already been to the Expo for two other days, and also speaks fluent Mandarin, so his help and advice was much appreciated.

(This is just one of the ~10 entrances, at least 10k people in each)

The main feeling for the day is being overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time.  I have never been in the presence of so many people.  It’s not so much that I get claustrophobic or don’t like being around people, it’s more that I don’t like being around Chinese tourists, who are having their first time out of the small village they seem to be from.  Their favorite pastime is to hurry up and wait, and then take unnecessary pictures of uninteresting things.  I think you can tell that at this point I’m a bit bitter.

(Student pass - 100Y well spent)

Anyway, due to some faulty information on the part of three Expo Volunteer helpers, we had no idea how to get this reservation, and just gave up on it. We crossed the river to the Pudong side, and saw our chance to get on a relatively short line (short means about 30 minutes) at the Kazakhstan Pavilion – who the hell wants to go to that one anyway right?  Wrong. While it was only three wrap-arounds long, for some reason this line took about an hour, wasting some precious time when we could have, in theory, been waiting on line for one of the cooler European pavilions. Oh well, if this is the type of mistake that I’m making these days, I think I’m in good shape.

(Kazakhstan! Like Borat)

Surprisingly, the Kazakhstan pavilion was actually pretty cool, aside from there only being one Kazakh person there – so much for exposing the world to your culture.  There were some cool video game things where you control the flying dragon by pretending you are a flying dragon, and putting your hands out like a bird and flying.  Pretty cool except when 150 other people figure this out and it turns into a shitshow.  Afterwards, we watched a pretty cool 3D movie (these are apparently a staple feature of pavilion shows) about Kazakhstan and then had a song performed by the one Kazakh woman in the whole place that got the crowd clapping to the beat.  It was nice, but also laughable at the same time.

(Inside, with the wacky space-age video game that all the Chinese thought they could play at the same time, but clearly couldn't)

(It was absolute mayhem when they saw the fake snowland. People screaming)

(Great performance with the clap-along)

Then we walked around some of the other Asian and Middle Eastern pavilions, all of which were under the shadow of the absolutely monstrous Chinese pavilion.  I’m pretty sure that there’s was made so big that you can see it from anywhere in the park – and it was a foggy day nonetheless!

(Japan, looks like a Jigglypuff)

(A little more create than their Kazakh neighbors)

(Korea, lots of anime-looking stuff on the outside)

(Iran)

(The Democratic People's Republic of Korea - inside a sign that reads: The Happiest People on Earth)

(Morocco)

(Qatar)

(Pakistan)

(China, dominating in the distance)

(More dubai)

(Israel)

(This was just cool)

Then we decided on one other pavilion to wait on line for, and it was the supremely cool-looking United Arab Emirates one, aka the oil-money pavilion.  Side note: Saudi Arabia had 3+-hour lines all day, as well as the actual “Oil” pavilion which was in the themed section, so UAE was the best we could do.  The line was felt pretty quick actually, and I only had to take pictures with a few adoring fans. The best part was that after thirty minutes, the line turned into a sitting line where we were shuffled across some benches before going in 1.5 hours later.  Bottom line on the inside of this one was that I now want to visit Dubai.  Fun fact: did you know that before oil, their economy had something to do with fishing for pearls? Yup, neither did I, but the cartoon movie told me so, so it must be true.

(He even lost his space in line to take a picture with me... true dedication)

(Inside UAE movie)

(Found a camel! Many paparazzi photos were taken of me being taller than the camel)

Afterwards, we went for some lunch, and then proceeded to walk around the outside of most of the other pavilions.  Some notable interesting-looking ones were Spain, England, Korea and UAE.  Some poorly-done ones: USA (definitely the most disappointing considering how many millions they threw into it), Kazakhstan, Germany and Japan (which looked like some kind of pokemon character on its back). Other than that, we went into the “area pavilions” for Africa and Oceania (South Pacific islands) which were for countries who, presumably, didn’t have enough dough to put into a big pavilion, and had little exhibits for themselves inside what amounted to a large warehouse.

(Malaysia)

(Cambodia - throwback to April)

(Australia, a big draw)

(Thailand)

(Belgium / EU building - free beer and pretzels)

(Serbia, randomly the coolest one in my opinion)

(Spain, not sure what this was)

(The daily parade, I think today was SE Asia)

(Not sure which country)

(Germany)

(Netherlands, really cool idea)

(England... lot's of questions, few answers)

(Poland)

(African pavilion)

(USA... big disappointment)

Overall, going to the Expo was worth it, and mildly enjoyable. The designs on the outsides were really cool, yet I still don’t understand the purpose of a World Expo, so maybe it failed in that regard.  I wouldn’t go again, unless I knew nobody else would be there, because this site officially put me over the edge in my dislike for Chinese tourists. Bottom line, they are rude, loud, pushy and overly excited about nothingness.

After the Expo around 6, Mike and I went by Metro to his uncle’s office (works for Levi’s) to meet u with him and some colleagues before we would go to dinner with them.  Mike had worked for his uncle in Shanghai two summers ago, so these people were like his long-lost friends.  We went out to this really fancy Chinese restaurant, which we were all (mostly myself in a t-shirt and neon yellow sneakers) underdressed for.  Lots of really interesting-looking and –tasting foods and many a glass of wine.  I had learnt early on in HK that the equivalent of cheers in Chinese is to say “gan bei” which basically translates to “clean your glass”, or their version of “bottoms up”.  However, it seems that in actual restaurants in real settings, this is actually used literally.  Many times throughout the night one person would cheers another and sometimes throw in a “gan bei”, leading to many clean glasses.  I kind of like the idea of cheers-ing many times during a meal – it adds a little excitement, slash allows adults to play drinking games without calling them that.

(Michael and his co-workers from a couple Shanghai)

Grabbed a bubble tea on the way home and said goodnight, hoping to hit up the bulk of my sightseeing over the next two days, I would need a good deal of recovering from the full day of standing and walking.