Our beautiful room at the Hyatt on the Bund in Shanghai, thanks to my friend Karrie at the Park Hyatt who introduced me to the marketing director for the hotel. A very nice way to travel!
The view from our window – Pudong (the new area of the city) on the left of the river and a view of the Bund, the famed walkway along the river, on the right.
Views from an evening wandering around the Old City where many of the old buildings have yet to be torn down or rehabed and life has stayed somewhat the same for the past few decades.
I of course bought some of these litchis right away to snack on.
Can you tell what Josh and I focus on when we travel?
Lot of eel eaten in this part of the country.
The view from our room at night. Because of the earthquake they’ve started turning all the lights off after 10pm (out of solidarity, not because it makes an actual difference) which makes it look like the city shuts down early. It doesn’t!
The executive lounge, where we had our breakfasts (which is a blessing, because coffee can be hard to find in China before 2pm unless you go to Starbucks). Thanks again to Karrie for hooking us up. There was also wi-fi, which was a lifesaver
Views of Shanghai from a cab. The city sometimes feels like LA – one of the most famous streets is a very SoCal-like outdoor mall, and there are lots and lots of cars and highways (they’re also pulling a Boston-like big dig and putting the elevated highway underground at the Bund; until they’re finished traffic is terrible there).
The area around the Bund. When Europeans first moved to China a lot of these buildings were foreign banks, businesses, etc.
The former French concession – lots of big, beautiful old homes with gardens (feels kind of Montecito).
More Shanghai.
Shanghai’s new wholesale market, where most other markets and restaurants come for their goods (and apparently we missed the busiest time, between 12am and 2am, when most things are sold).
Rows and rows like this full of bags of peeled garlic cloves, scrubbed ginger, huge bags of dried chiles, etc.
Cassava stacked like firewood.
The place is huge.
A truck full of cucumbers.
Lots of tofu and wheat gluten (the big pillow-looking things).
And of course lots of dried seafood.
For some reason people in China feel they can grab you by the arm and physically move you to where they want you – sometimes that’s in a picture with them (not that they had a camera; they just wanted to be in a photo with me on our film. Why? No idea.)
Yes, those are all innards.
In the morning, after the rows and rows of butchers are finished with the whole carcasses hanging from hooks in their stalls, they hose the stalls down, then hose themselves down, then proceed to sharpen their knives.
There are also rows and rows of seafood.
Yes, these are frogs, and yes, they are groceries.
Killing and de-spining eels while waiting for customers.
The view from our hotel’s glass elevator – old buildings getting torn down or remodeled in the foreground, regular Shanghai in the background.
The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum in the oldest synagogue in Shanghai. Apparently there was a long history of Jewish refugees moving to Shanghai to escape pogroms and, of course, to escape Hitler. During WWII there was actually a Jewish ghetto in Shanghai (courtesy of Hitler’s directions to the Japanese, who ignored his request that they proceed with more “final” relocations of the Jews; not that they had a moral objection, they were just more preoccupied how much they hated the Chinese).
These are the plastic covers they make you wear on your feet in all parts of the museum. The Chinese can be so strange sometimes.
Welcome to Suzhou!
Suzhou was once known as “the Venice of the Orient”. Most of the canals that ran through the city’s center have been filled in, but the moat still runs around the old city.
The Old City still has a pretty small town feel to it because with the exception of one big open air mall full of Starbucks and athletic apparel stores and fast food chain (and, of course, lots and lots of neon) the area is still full of small, old-style buildings. Some are rebuilt in an ancient style, some are old buildings that have been rehabbed, but some are still just genuinely old. For centuries Suzhou was the intellectual and cultural capital of China and it’s still a big tourist destination for the Chinese. One of our friends noted that it’s the Hamptons of Shanghai since it’s only 40 minutes away by train.
The North Temple Pagoda.
From the first couple levels you see the garden around the pagoda and the gray slate rooftops of the old city.
As you get further up you start to see what Suzhou has become in the last few years – a city of foreign investment companies manufacturing everything from German beer to L’Oreal makeup and high-strength metals for car parts.
By 7pm on some days the weather cooled down enough that you could actually stand to be outside. The gardens around the pagoda were nicely empty because everyone eats dinner here between 6 and 7pm.
It was “lobster” season in the southern areas of China, so we went to the most famous place to get it in China. The lobsters are really langostines, about 6 inches long, cooked in a fragrant, oily, spicy broth.
To eat them everyone puts on plastic gloves and bibs. You pull their heads off and suck out their innards, then crack open their tails and eat the meat, then pop the claws into your mouth and crunch them up, spitting out the shells.
We had a lovely pumpkin steeped in sugary syrup with it. People in Suzhou like sweet food.
While I did interviews for work, Josh took lots of pictures around Shan Tang Jie.
Pork and eel noodles for lunch. The woman at the counter saw that I was just ordering what the person in front of me ordered and took the liberty of making sure I got two different things so that I could try both the place’s specialties. The were really, really good!
Suzhou is a city of gardens. The scholars who lived there built beautiful gardens
Aug 5, 10:14 PM − Posted in