When I visited China, almost exactly one year ago, I flew into the Shanghai airport. Chris met me there, and we had three hours to kill before our train to Nanjing left. So we walked down Nanjing Road, which blew my small town Arkansan mind - between the jet lag and the total sensory overload involved in a Shanghai crowd, I spent my first few hours as a tourist in China completely shell shocked.
Previously, my ideas about Shanghai were largely informed by the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The Shanghai in my head remains thoroughly saturated with gangsters, loose women, thieves, and smart-mouthed underage native sidekicks. We spent three days roaming around the city, and I still don’t know what to think about it.
I mean, if you’re in China, OF COURSE you should see Shanghai. We didn’t wander too far away from the Bund/French Concession/Nanjing Xi Lu area, but these places were clean, modern, and startlingly easy compared to Nanjing. The streets were stocked with public trash cans and ashtrays, for starters, and we got the impression that everyone spoke English - the hotel, the restaurants, the train station, the organic smoothie bar, the Converse shoe store, the beggars, the hawkers, etc. The sidewalks were large and clear (except for the human river), the shops were spacious and well-organized, and everything was shockingly clean and well cared for. Also, in three days during which a lot of public bathrooms got used, I only saw one squatter, and it was in the train station.
Overall, Shanghai struck me as a really sleek, sexy, enormous international city, and I’m glad we spent some time in it. I was surprised at how self-conscious and backwoodsy it made me feel - we were plastered against spotless glass windows oohing and ahhhing over pistachio cheese cake, freshly squeezed mango and strawberry juice smoothies with protein boosts, clothing stores that regularly stocked our sizes and weren’t doused in glitter and sequins like everything is here, and the sophistication of the residents. But something about it bothered me - because Nanjing is NOT backwoodsy, at all. It’s a really progressive city with a ton of culture, populated largely by friendly, curious people who’ll help you out if you’re in trouble, language barrier be damned, and while we were bathed in western luxury and exciting glass and steel citiscapes in Shanghai, I still felt more comfortable with dirty, messy, friendly, and genuine Nanjing, and I was really relieved to come home.
That said, though, Shanghai is an exciting cosmopolitan place, and if you can stand the crowds, it’s worth the trip. We weren’t really in the market for a “Get to Know Shanghai” trip - it was more of a “Let’s Get Out of Nanjing and Far Away From Work So We Can Actually Relax” sort of deal. So there was a lot of gratuitous Starbucks drinking, sleeping in, and avoidance of an inflexible schedule of events. We did walk around the Bund, though, and we saw the aquarium and the natural history museum. We had a really good time, but the entire trip was really bipolar. Around our hotel and in the French Concession, everything was so calm and fun and relaxed, but anywhere further up Nanjing Road was maddeningly crowded and stressful. I’ll get around to the specifics later.
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