Things to do in Shanghai...

After having guests stay with us recently I have made some mental notes of what they like to do.

Some are obvious like shop and eat, and shop some more, and eat some more... go to or just look at the Orient Pearl Tower. :)

Others which may not be so obvious but seem popular are:

1. Go to the fabric market. Get something made. If you want a suit you'll need at the very least a full week though. Simple things can be done in about 4 days. Bargain at least 10% if not 20% off! Start with 70% of the price they quote you. Addresses are listed in one of my older posts.

2. Get a massage. Massage places are EVERYWHERE and compared to almost any other country, are dirt cheap. The place we go to we pay 60 RMB for 1 hour for either a full body massage or foot massage. It is located in the Hongqiao/Gubei/Changning area known as "Little Japan" on Xianxia Lu and Zunyi Lu. It is always busy and they do a pretty good job!

When that's done, shop some more and eat some more ;)

Some places I can recommend are:

1. Xujiahui - where you can get anything under the sun, where there are 6? department stores, and the big Grand Gateway mall. Where the geeks can go crazy at Best Buy (or Metro City or Pacific Digital Plaza), and the foodies can go crazy at the top of Grand Gateway and Novel Place, and the shoe-aholics and clothes-aholics can go crazy at any store. My favourites are Pacific and No.6 department store. I can usually find clothes and shoes in there that I like at reasonable prices. The brands at Grand Gateway are generally way too expensive for me (since they are mostly foreign, mostly European brands). For basic staples (plain coloured tops, pants) Uniqlo (in GG) is great. Lots of easy-to-wear, mix-and-match stuff at great prices.

2. Huaihai Lu - previously known as Avenue Joffre, or the "Champs Elysee of the Orient" this road is about 15km long. Yep, mega long. It's divided up into three parts - West, Central and East. Most of the 'action' can be found in the Central part (which is also the longest). I have pretty much walked along the entire street. It is tiring but the most benefit can be gained (for a shopaholic) by walking across most of length of this street (not in the one go!). There is no point to take a taxi and you can take a bus or the subway but you miss a lot doing that since the stops can be far apart. If you are just randomly browsing it's much better to walk, and walk and... walk. Near Shaanxi Nan Lu, Maoming Nang Lu, Huangpi Nan Lu (and in between) there are lots of department stores and boutiques. This street is also the home of wedding dresses and bridal photography stores. One after another, big glass windows with glittering displays of fancy sequinned, frilled, coloured, embroidered, wedding dresses. Billions and billions of different kinds. They must do a good business because day or night, they are filled with customers looking at their large sample albums. I like to take the 911 bus along this street because it's a double decker one and you can feel like a real tourist sitting at the top and looking out the windows. At 2 RMB a trip it's fun just to ride the bus along the whole length of this road to get a feel of what it has to offer you! :) Once you have pinpointed the places that interest you (I actually marked on a map where my favourite stores were), then you can get out and start pounding the pavement.

3. Dain Ti Hill/Neo Tang Dynasty - crazy Chinese modern fushion cuisine. Really tasty. There are chains everywhere but seeing as I just talked about XJH there is one on the 5th floor of Grand Gateway. Usually it's so popular you have to queue for an hour or so but sometimes you can get lucky and only have to wait 5-10 minutes. There is also one in an expat type mall on Huahai Lu near the Hong Kong Plaza. The one with Delifrance out the front.

4. Lynn - modern Shanghainese cuisine. Now I don't normally like Chinese food much but this place was out of this world. It would have gotten a 10/10 if it weren't for the fact that they allowed smoking. The fish with pinenuts was absolutely delicious. It looks like an expensive type of place too (being right near the Ritz Carlton hotel and Nanjing Xi Lu) but for 4 people we paid 490 RMB including drinks.
99-1 Xikang Lu near Nanjing Xi Lu 西康路99-1号近南京西路

5. Wagas - the good ol' staple. My husband is addicted to this place. Opened by an Australian there are now restaurants all over Shanghai. It serves simple, healthy stuff - sandwiches, wraps, salads, pasta for a reasonable price, and great smoothies and freshly squeezed juices. Everything is really fresh! If you go after 6pm they have specials on the pasta. The one on Huaihai Lu near Huangpi Nan Lu is always busy and easily accessible.

Ballroom Dancing in the Park

I don't know why but I have been having so much trouble logging into Blogger due to the stupid TGF. I have all these things in my head that I want to write about but can't login. Then when I CAN get in, I forget or don't feel like writing anymore.. anyhoo. These are some posts I wrote up offline...

Sunday 26 August, 2007

Once again we had a lazy weekend and on Sunday night we decided to go out for dinner. Mike suggested Waga's again and after reading too many free city magazines about restaurant reviews, my brain was all fuzzy so I agreed. I went online and found the address of the one closest to us which was apparently in the Hongqiao/Gubei area, in Maxdo Center. We didn't know where the taxi driver was taking us but wow, it was only 1.6km away from our house! We couldn't believe it was so close. Not only that but there were many other shops and restaurants there too and the area seemed really nice. There was also a ritzy Sheraton Grand (5 star) hotel there too. So we definitely plan to go back to that area!

While we were waiting for the waitress to bring us our food, this guy started looking over at Mike, and Mike started looking at him. I wondered why the heck they were staring at each other so strangely. It so happened that they had met once before! Their companies had competed against each other at a basketball competition. Hmm... interesting. So we chatted to him for a while. He is from the States and had been in Shanghai for 8 months and lived in Songjiang (woop woop) and decided to move to Zhongshan Park.

After dinner we went across the road to Hongqiao Park (it used to be called something else, as was mentioned in Lonely Planet) where it was pitch black but the park was lit up by lamp posts. It was an interesting sight. Music was floating through the air, the air was balmy yet a comfortable 26 degrees with a nice breeze. There was a big group of middle aged and older couples and friends ballroom dancing to Chinese-style ballroom music! It was an amazing sight to see. It was one of those moments, like when I'm watching a great film where my heart just fills with happiness and content even though the event has nothing to do with me. There were many spectators like us standing around to gawk at them too.

I was just amazed by their skill, their flexibility, their agility and their smiles. They all seemed so happy. It was as if they didn't have a care in the world. Half the people were wearing very very casual clothes too. Almost pajama like, but it didn't even matter.

It got me thinking to something else I wanted to post before. At our gym there are people of all ages going there. From teens to people in their 60s or older. Many high school aged kids play basketball while the oldies play table tennis and badminton. There are also younger kids who swim in the pool or play badminton. At gyms in Australia there are no basketball courts or table tennis rooms. At my gym in Australia I would say almost everyone would be between the age of 20-35. I was a bit naive to the whole gym thing and expected to see fat, unhealthy people when I first joined. However, I was shocked to find that most people didn't even look like they needed to go to a gym! There was hardly anyone who looked overweight and certainly not many people over the age of 40.

Sport is big in Australia and most kids and teenagers are quite active in playing sport. However, after high school I think most people don't ever take it up again, at least not on a regular basis. I also think that Australians (and Westerners) are very image and self conscious. Hence the 'fat' people are too ashamed to go to the gym because they are scared of what people will think of them, which is fair enough. Also I noticed the way people were dressed at my gym, wearing the latest fancy gym clothes and name brand shoes. However, in China, no one gives two hoots about what others think (I think this is where I am very Asian as I usually don't care either).

Therefore, the fact that these dancers were old, not necessarily wearing picture-perfect clothes or shoes, not necessarily that great at dancing, didn't matter. The fact of the matter was that they were having fun and enjoying it, and being outside and getting fit. Almost everyone there (around 50-70 years of age) was slim and healthy looking. Most of the ladies were tiny. I really hope to be that happy and fit when I am their age!

Our sixth month wedding anniversary...

Last night we celebrated our 6th month anniversary. We were to-ing and fro-ing about which restaurant to go to. It is always so hard to choose because they are just SO many here! We were going to go to a fancy one but it was raining and a bit horrible so we decided just to go to a cheapish one, more like a cafe, serving Western-style dishes. We already have their menu in a home delivery booklet so we knew the types of dishes they had and it seemed to have good reviews online.

We decided to go to Wagas on Huaihai Rd (not the one in the picture)

As soon as we walked in I was really happy because 1) it did not reek of smoke (in fact the whole place was non-smoking, a rarity and a treasure in China!) 2) there were lots of people on laptops (free wireless?) and it just reminded me so much of home. The only thing that gave it away that we were in China was the bilingual menu and all Chinese staff.

There were 4 people with laptops and 2 of them had macs (a fairly high ratio I would say!) that made me feel like it was even more like 'home' haha.

I was very impressed and humbled when a guy sitting next to us, typing on his Mac laptop, was speaking to the waitress in fluent Mandarin. But not only was it fluent, it was quite complicated business-like jargon. I actually didn't even really know what he was saying as it was far beyond my level of comprehension. In that precise moment I felt ashamed and embarrassed that I, with my Chinese background, and him with his American or wherever (Western country) background could speak such great Mandarin! (and not to mention read and type it too).

What better way to console myself than going across the road to the Pacific department store (gotta love the 10pm closing time every night) and going shoe shopping! It was packed as usual and the sales are so great. Eg 50% off then another 20% off. And beautiful soft leather, both inner and upper. My size is also right in the middle of the range and very common (whereas in Australia I can hardly ever buy anything because they just don't make my size or have sold out of it). They were 890 RMB (AU$140) down to 350 RMB ($55) which is freakin' expensive for China but the quality is so good, and leather so soft, like Italian shoes.

Oh btw the food was absolutely scrumptious and now I have read more from the site I just posted, I had a good reason why it felt so much like 'home'. Because the manager is Chinese Australian and there is definitely the Australian connection there... :)