Shanghai: Days Three and Four

(I posted this a week or so ago, but Blogger had an outage and the post disappeared.)

Sunday morning Mike and I went to Yu Yuan, a garden / tourist attraction / shopping plaza in the old Chinese part of Shanghai.  It was really crowded, but we enjoyed wandering the area.

I stopped for a minute by a booth selling a hair gizmo; I thought it might be useful for putting my hair up for work.  I got closer and asked the guy how much the tool was; he countered by asking if he could style my hair.  

That afternoon we were able to attend an Easter church service at an international church in the French Concession.  It was a great time of worship and celebration, with a crowd of people from all over the world.  As a small reminder that we were still in Communist China though we were told several times that the service was just for foreign passport holders.

After church we stopped by a local Sichuanese restaurant.  Sichuan cuisine is known for its spiciness--the Sichuan peppercorn called "hua-jiao" has both a distinctive flavor and unmistakable heat.  There were a couple of Sichuan dishes that I wanted to be sure to have while we were in China:  mapo dofu, or spicy tofu with pork, and gongbao jiding, known in the U.S. (in disastrously Americanized form) as Kung Pao Chicken.  We enjoyed a meal of the real thing.

That afternoon we visited another of Shanghai's iconic sites--the Bund.  This area along the Huangpu River has some beautiful architecture, Art Deco on the west side, and ultra-modern on the east.

As it's a tourist destination both for foreigners and non-Shanghainese Chinese, it's also a great place to people-watch.

Dinner was Shanghainese food in the trendy Xintiandi neighborhood of rebuilt shikumen style buildings housing boutiques and restaurants.  It was a great meal, and almost made up for the fact that Yang's Kitchen, the Shanghainese restaurant I had planned to go to for dinner our first night in Shanghai, had closed down.

After dinner we made our way back to the river and across to Pudong, where we had drinks and dessert on the 88th story of the Jin Mao Tower, where the views were almost as good as the food.

Monday we only had a few hours before we had to leave for the airport, but we made good use of them.  We stopped by a hole-in-the-wall tea shop where we sampled some Chinese favorites and bought a couple of small gifts, then spent the rest of the morning browsing the Taikang Rd. neighborhood, which is full of art galleries, boutiques, and cafes.  (Have I mentioned my husband is long-suffering?)  

It was a great trip.  I'm already looking forward to going to Beijing sometime in the next year or so!