Andre and Wendy: Shanghai - Shanghai Museum

Hard to believe this is our last full day of visiting in China. Today at breakfast a business man sat beside us and we started talking to him. He is from Palo Alto, CA and we talked about everything from the changes in Shanghai (he first came here in 1980), him meeting Pierre Trudeau, his Pilipino wife and how she was able to sponsor him to get into Canada, he is from Indonesia originally. Anyway turns out he feels that he owes something to Canada and offered to take us to the bund tonight to see the lights, he said we should really experience the subway and will take a few of us if we can all walk. We arrange to meet in the lobby at 8, but tell him we are not certain we can be there, and also if he has plans to not change them and wait for us, we’ll see what happens.

View from the business lounge at our hotel

We started off today with a shopping visit at the silk factory. This was pretty interesting, we saw how the silk worm spins their cocoon and how they take the silk worms out, and then some eat them, passed on that. This place made a killing on people buying silk comforters, we passed. Many people on our tour bought them, everyone said they were a great deal, but no need for silk for us, so we left lots for others. I did purchase a silk cushion cover for the living room, I want a new chair, so I guess I’ll try to match it with the new cushion!

Silk factory

Stretching silk to make a comforter

Prices of real estate in this area, The top one is a 2000 square feet condo and it is 3.5 million Canadian. Notice the blue packages people are carrying, these are the silk comforters that they shrink down for travel.

Next stop was the bund, the most famous view of Shanghai. It really is spectacular, I know pictures will not do it justice. We again were given quite a bit of free time to explore. I think it is about 2KM long, you look across the very busy river traffic to a fantastic skyline of skyscrapers. Hard to believe this has all been built in the last 25 years or so. Shanghai is known as the financial centre of China, Beijing the historical and political centre of China.

On the bund in Shanghai with Martin and Tammy

After lunch we are off to the Shanghai Museum. We had quite a bit of time to spend here and a few of us decided to just explore the traditional costumes floor, then we were off to find some more shopping. A couple of people wanted purses and watches so we were on a mission to go back to Nanjing Road and find a deal! It really is fun going through this process, we went back to the shop we had been in yesterday, lots of haggling back and forth and I think 3 purses and 3 watches were bought in the end. We didn’t add anything else to our purchases, we already have our Rolex and Gucci watches, and I have way too many purses at home now anyway, will save these knock off purchases for New York at some time I guess.

Shanghai Museum

Traditional costumes at the museum

One of only a couple of Christian Churches we saw the entire 2 weeks

China hamburger?

Back wall of store opens to where you go illegal purse and watch knock off shopping, FUN!

Following the Shanghai museum we were committed to visiting a cashmere shop, I think the tour spent a total of 10 minutes here, but it was fun exploring the shop beside them that had silk embroidery and carpets. What amazing work! Once again nothing purchased by us.

Silk embroidery

We are then taken to the Old Town Shanghai market. Beautiful old Chinese architecture found here, something I really thought we would see more of on this trip. We did purchase some more tea here, as well as 2 tea cups.

Found a food court like we would have in the malls here, Andre had a good time wandering taking pictures

Beautiful architecture in Old Town Shanghai market

This is a live show that you look through and the man on the left commentates, no idea what is in there, but popular with kids and adults

Found out these are straws in the dumplings, filled with some kind of soup, we did not try them, but found out later some did and it was good

Tonight is our last supper with table 7, tomorrow we are all leaving at different times to goodbyes to our bus tour friends that we have met over the last 2 weeks. Again it has gone by so quickly like all vacations do.

We saw these signs a few times, wondered if they just change it to 2017 in a few more months?

Back to the hotel at 8PM and I see our new friend Ray from breakfast in the lobby, we ask him if he can wait 10 minutes as we all have stuff to take up to our rooms. Back to the lobby and we are off to the subway to go to the bund. It really wasn’t hard to do, had to change lines once. They have 500 km of subway now, another 500 to be added in the next 5 years. We probably would have struggled buying the tickets from the machine, and walking through the gates was different than any of us are used to in metro, underground, subway or whatever you call it, so this caused some laughs. There were 6 of us in total including Ray, and he was a great tour guide. A much different pace than our daily tour, this man walked extremely fast! One of the other guys is really into photography as well, so we had lots of stops to make as we walked around. So many more people on the bund at night, it really is “the” place to go for the lights. If we would have had one more night it would have been great to do a river cruise at night as well. We walk from the bund to Peoples Square, with a quick stop at the Fairmont Peace Hotel, then catch the subway back to the hotel from here, we are totally done by now. It has been a long fantastic day, and we are exhausted.