The View from Huangpu Park on a Misty Day

Some of the Bund's iconic buildings

Many tourists and almost as many vendors in Huangpu Park, with some of the Bund's buildings in the background. At sunset, the number of people in the park is multiplied by at least ten.

The Pudong, with the distinctive Oriental Pearl Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center a little to the right

The Old and the New

If there’s one area of Shanghai that can be considered an icon of the city, it’s the banks of the Huangpu river: the old-world Bund on one side and the shiny, brand-new Pudong on the other. Flocks and flocks of tourists gather here, to the point that it’s really hard to take a picture in any direction without getting at least a couple of heads in the front. Keep an eye on you belongings and your companions! Together, the Bund and the Pudong summarize a lot of what the city was and is about.

The Bund is a water-fronted avenue, lined with buildings made by Europeans in the first decades of the 20ty century, when Shanghai was the sin city of the East. These buildings include Art-Deco type hotels, several big banks, and headquarters of large corporations, with a very European flair and every single one of them topped by a few Chinese flags (all of them belong to the government nowadays.)

On the other side of the river it’s all about the modern buildings in dramatic shapes, like the Oriental Pearl Tower, with an architecture that looks it was inspired by some old sci-fi illustration, the tall Jin Mao building, which houses the luxurious Grand Hyatt hotel and has a terrific view over the city, and the brand new Shanghai World Financial Center, the world’s third tallest building, which is still in construction.

Everything in the Pudong looks new, and I doubt there’s any building there that’s more than 15 years old. It feels like all those steel-and-glass corporate towers and the predominantly white residential buildings all suddenly sprouted of the ground like mushrooms.

A recent addition to this interesting dichotomy is a tunnel under the river, which connects the two banks via a neon-lit psychedelic-type experience. Add the even more neon-filled Nanjing Avenue nearby, and it’s like Shanghai is steadily turning into Walt Disney World.

Buddhas that aren't golden (for a change)

I met my parents and the guide at Shanghai airport. Our guide was in his twenties, with an ear piercing and a flashy cell phone he had trouble putting away. In the morning of our first day he took us to the Jade Buddha temple. This temple reminded me a little of the Lama temple in Beijing. While the Lama temple is housed in a former palace, this one looks like it used to be a wealthy person’s home, in terms of architecture. And while the Lama temple features some Tibetan art and imagery, the Jade Buddha temple features, well, a Buddha made of jade. Actually, there are two.

According to the story, a monk brought about five jade statues from Burma, though three of them were more like statuettes. The two large ones—one a sitting Buddha and the other a reclining one—were actually hidden from view from the Cultural Revolution until the eighties. They’re significantly smaller than many other Buddhas I’d seen on my trips, but none the less impressive, given the material they were carved out of. Unfortunately, photos of the jade Buddhas were not allowed.

The jade statues aren’t all there is to see in the temple. I found two other interesting statues, the Laughing Buddha (also called Budai), and the armor-clad Veda. There was also a curious depiction of a female deity, Guanyin, whose particular role in the Chinese Buddhist pantheon I cannot recall.

The incense burner in the main courtyard

Depiction of Guanyin, a female deity

Another courtyard, seen from the hallway leading to the Jade Buddhas. From here, the temple really looks like a villa, I think.

Shanghai or This Blog isn't Dead

Just because six months have come and gone and we have been back from Asia for quite some time now, it doesn’t mean the tale of our travels is over. It’s just that it’s harder to find both the time and the mental availability to update this blog these days. We ended up staying in Asia for one more month than the six originally planned, and aside from exploring more of Singapore, we were able to take two more trips abroad.

In late September, it was Steve’s turn not to go, this time to Shanghai. I met my parents there, who had been taking essentially the Beijing tour we’d been on back in July, except for a stop in Xi’an.

Shanghai is a very different city from Beijing. Sure, they’re both quite large and populous and undergoing and immense development, but in feel they are very apart. For all the glass and concrete skyscrapers, Beijing is still very much the stately head of the government, while Shanghai is the cosmopolitan center of business. If I had to choose one of them to live in, I wouldn’t think twice about picking Shanghai, since, at least for the time being, there is a lot more to do there, even though there are certainly less tourist attractions.

Said tourist attractions are the centered around the European-influenced Bund and French Concession, the Yu Yuan Gardens, a (then) privately-owned and more sensibly sized version of the Summer Palace, the Jade Buddha temple, and the new developments around the city, namely the Pudong.

Besides these must-see places, Shanghai is a fine place just to walk around, admiring the European and industrial-type architectures, or shopping for great bargains at a thousand little boutiques that seem to sprout like mushrooms. It’s also the original place of Dim Sum and therefore a great city to indulge your palate, not just in Chinese cuisine, but in many other types of food you’ll find in all sorts of restaurants. At night, there are several bars and shows to choose from, as well as the more traditional option of attending an acrobatics show (apparently, the acrobats are more a tradition of Shanghai than Beijing, which surprised me.)

Interestingly enough, despite a having a great number of expats and a generally international feel, it’s hard to find anyone in Shanghai—except in hotels—that will speak other languages than Mandarin. In my next posts I will go into more detail about the places we visited and the things we did. Also, I have videos.

Kokoen gardens

This collection of nine gardens, albeit recent, is already the second biggest attraction of Himeji. Even if you can't understand the sometimes subtle differences between all the gardens - we were lucky to have a guide pointing them out for us -, you can always appreciate their beauty. Here are some shots.

Himeji Castle

At the entrance to the castle

The castle seen from the grounds in front of the West Bailey

Inside the West Bailey, a long building shaped like a corridor with many rooms, where Princess Sen and her maids lived.

A sunken door in the West Bailey. In case of emergency, the door could be easily blocked form the inside, using the lateral stones.

Princess Sen's quarters, the Cosmetic Tower

Even in the castle grounds, the walls are thick and have holes for shooting.

One of the about fourteen gates or so you have to go through to get into the castle. A lot of them are tucked away in corners where you wouldn't think of looking.

Inside the castle proper, which was built as a fortress, many walls are lined with fire arms and bags of gunpowder.

The view from the top floor of the castle. That thing on the left is one of many amulets against fire.

When they took down the castle, they built this model of all the support beams, so they'd know how to reassemble it.

If you want to see more, you can take the this photo interactive tour.

The Egret Castle and the Nine Gardens of Himeji

On our last day in Japan we took the Hikari to the the city of Himeji, not too far from Osaka. Waiting for us at the station was Ms. Misako, a retired engineer that now works as a volunteer guide in her spare time. Ms. Misako carried a small binder with a ton of information about Himeji Castle. Unlike Nijô Castle in Kyoto, Himeji Castle is a real castle, which served as a defensive station during the war times before the shogunate was established. It also served as temporary residence for princess Sen, the granddaughter of the first shogun.

The castle was built in the 14th century and, unlike almost any other castle in Japan, it has never been burned down or otherwise destroyed. However, in the 20th century it was fully disassembled and rebuilt for restoration purposes. Some of the wood and stones were replaced, but it is mostly the original that you'll see standing. The whole restoration work seems even more amazing when you actually take in the castle's full size. To completely take it down and re-assemble it exactly as it was was truly an awesome feat.

The castle is commonly called the "Egret Castle" or "White Heron Castle" due to its elegant shape. However, when you start exploring it, you realize how its function had nothing to do with elegance. The castle grounds are a maze of walls and gates devised to confuse and trap any intruders. It was most definitely not meant as a luxury noble residence. Even on the inside, you can see how the doors have been built lower than the floors, so they can be easily blocked from the inside, and there are hole and slits everywhere from which can throw stones and shoot arrows to the outside. From the top floor you can enjoy a commanding view of the city.

We actually spent about three hours exploring very nook and cranny of the castle, with the help of our knowledgeable guide so, by the time we left, we were starving. We went to the nearby Koko-en gardens and had a local meal of noodles and barbecued conger-eel sushi. Even though I usually stay away from eel, I must admit everything was pretty much delicious.

After lunch our guide took us on a short tour of the gardens. They were built in the 1990's, on the site of some former noble houses. The old walls have been restored and serve as divisions to the nine different gardens. I'm sure the Japanese visitors will be able to find a lot more contrasts in each garden than we, who are anything but Japanese garden experts, did.

Still, it's clear even to us that each garden has its own theme and features. One is a bamboo-only garden, another is a Zen-style garden, yet another one is a tea appreciation garden and has its own teahouse, a fourth one is a pine tree garden and so on. You really need two full hours to be able to fully appreciate the gardens, and we only had one before we had to rush back to catch our train, so we sort of breezed through it, and had no time for tea.

When we arrived back at Kyoto, we made our way to Kitano Tenman-gû Shrine. Yes, we had had our share of shrines and temples, but this one had a monthly market going on on that day and we wanted to take a look. The market was mostly a flea market and not a reliable place to pick up antiques or anything of that sort. Still, it was a lot of fun browsing all sorts of wares, sampling some festival-type food and watching the children play a popular fishing game, in which one must try and catch as many goldfish as you can with a thin paper membrane. It looks hard, but those kids were doing a great job. Maybe they've been practicing for years.

From the Kitano Tenman-gû shrine we took the bus to the city center, and walked around the main shopping area, where I had the chance to eat a really good Portuguese egg tart. I had no idea those were popular in Japan! Then we walked back to Ponto-Chô for a final sushi dinner and later we had a few drinks at Garbo, a local little bar whose owner (who spoke no English) and assistant were kind enough to welcome two foreigners and even have us sample a few local snacks. We ended up staying later than anticipated, and when we finally got to the hotel, we packed our suitcases quickly and went to sleep.