Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 8

The cute puppy picture for the week! In the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC for short), they have these "guard dogs" ... although guard dogs is a little rough once you see them .. they are amazingly cute! There are 3 of them that we see, although Tom sees them more often than I do since he goes to lunch in the SWFC alot of the time. So this one was sitting outside of the Starbucks on the first floor. Tom always talks about how when he sees them, they are trying to sleep .. their little eyes droopy and closing. At least when I snapped this photo, he seemed to be still awake! There is also a long discussion on whether they are wearing "diapers" or "underwear". Each of these puppies has these little "bottoms" ... I think they look more like underwear although Tom likes to say diapers. It is a little odd ... maybe they are diapers and the dogs don't get to go outside very often. Or maybe it is an up-scale enough building that they don't believe that even dogs should walk around without following the "proper business attire" dress code :-)

Saturday we went over to the Puxi side of Shanghai to pick up some clothes that we had tailor-made and have lunch. On the walk over from the ferry dock, we looked over to the PuDong side of the river and got this shot of the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC). The building is sometimes called the "bottle opener" because from one angle, the top looks like a bottle opener. However, this is a different view of the building that we hadn't really noticed before.

We had gotten Susan a casual skirt and Tom a dress shirt made via 2 new tailors. The skirt is done at the Shiliupu Fabric Market on Dongmen Road by someone who we got the name/business card for from our friend Carol, who lives downstairs. Then the shirt for Tom was made by this tailor's father, who has a business at the South Bund fabric market. We were able to pick up both at the Shiliupu Fabric Market, which made things much more convenient since it is a shorter trip by Ferry than the South Bund market.

These are a couple views of what these Fabric Market's look like.

Each shop has a number (like No. 151) and most have name (A Wei)

As you walk around, all of them have fabrics out that you can see as well as clothes hanging and on manniquins to show what they can make. We've kept to only using tailors that someone has recommended to us. When you read the travel books and talk to people, the quality of these tailors are "hit and miss" so we think it is best to start small (one piece to gauge the quality) and also only use those that we can see someone else who has had clothes made there.

No pictures on the actual clothes, but both the skirt and shirt fit perfectly the first time, and seem to be pretty good quality, so we are quite likely to have more things made if we need them.

Saturday we decided to walk across Century Avenue to a park that Tom can see from his window at work. Here is a map of the Lujiajui part of the PuDong New District, which is where we live.

A little bit of a close-up picture of the park itself. You can see the lake in the middle, which was built to replicate the shape of the PudOng area of Shanghai.

And then here is our little part of the map: Skyline Mansion, which is the complex that we live in (we even make the map!). There are the 3 buildings, and we are in the building on the far right. It looks like there is or was a plan to build more buildings across Dongtai Rd, since you can see another "Skyline Mansion" block there. However, there are no buildings over there and most of it is just an empty city block.

One of the first things we came across in the park is the Panorama Sail, which we were lucky enough to find a plaque that talks about it in both Chinese and English.

And then, the Panorama Sail itself. Underneath there are seats and a little refreshment area where you can buy a coke or coffee and look out over the lake.

Tom loves to think about "I wonder what this looked like " long ago. They had this great wall of pictures that showed the Pudong area back through time. Looking at the 1993 picture, there was nothing here but farmland.

Four short years later and you can see the JinMao tower almost completed along with a few other tall buildings. The green spot in the middle is the park, which you can see clearly in this picture. The lake in the middle of the park, called Central Lake, covers 8600 square meters. Supposedly there are 3 groups of fountains in the lake that are active at night, and there are lights that make the fountains look like a lotus flower rising into the night sky. We'll have to go over one night and see how accurate that is.

By 2007, you can see alot of development has occurred, including the completion of the SWSF next to the Jinmao Tower. This is what they sometimes call the "bottle opener" because from this angle you can see the top of it has this opening that resembles a bottle opener.

And then, by 2010 it is fully developed!

Just a couple pictures to show the park and the green area. It is a little interesting to me the way the park is, which I assume is the same as any city with skyscrapers. It is like this little oasis completely surrounded by these tall skyscrapers. We do like that each skyscraper here has a different look and architecture, so it is quite interesting to look at.

There is also this little rock sculpture area on the edge of the lake. During the time that we were in the park, we saw at least 3 different wedding parties getting pictures taken. We're heard that the lake is a very popular place as a backdrop for wedding photos, and sure enough, we saw quite a few.

Tom had noticed looking out his window at the park that they were adding some new sculptures, so we went by to take a closer look.

And next to the new sculptures, they have bronze people who seem to be looking up at the new sculptures, the one on the right has a camera in her hand as well.

They have a bit area of flowers on one side of the park which looked really nice.

This group of sculptures, near one entrance, is called "Spring" and is made up of eight iron pieces that are meant to be flowers. I show 3 of them in this picture, and they are arranged on both sides of the entrance. The plaque near them says that they are there in place of a traditional entrance to symbolize that Lujiazui keeps it's door wide and open forever, welcoming guests and friends from all over the world.

And we left the park by the "non-traditional entrance" and walked over the nearby road in an elevated walkway and from there, we took this lovely picture which shows a more overall view of the lake and the Panorama Sail.

Sunday was supposed to be spent inside, watching Typhoon Muifa come through Shanghai. However, our first Typhoon was the typhoon that wasn't! After spending a few days on a direct path to Shanghai, it decided to head North to the Korean Penninsula instead and really bypassed Shanghai. Sunday we got a bit of rain and wind, but nothing major. We stayed pretty close to the apartment for lunch ... having Sushi in the basement of the SWFC. Tom had gone there for lunch earlier in the week and they have a sushi conveyor belt ... sushi comes around on places and you pick what you want off the belt. When done, there is someone who adds up what you ate, based on the color-coding of the plates, and then you go pay for it. Sunday there was almost nobody there for lunch, so they didn't have the belt going with sushi ... you just ordered what you wanted on the card and they made it right in front of you. It also came with green tea (make it yourself with a tea bag and a hot-water-spigot at each seat) and soup (kinda miso-ish but no seaweed or tofu, but chunks of fish, onions, and something else I didn't recognize, but quite tasty).

After letting the rain pass, we headed out for a short walking tour and then to dinner. This is a decorative gate near the YuYuan Gardens and Bazaar area that we had been to before.

In one of the previous weeks, we had gone to a dumpling restaurant that is supposed to be one of the best in the city, in the YuYuan Bazaar. We walked by there today and as always, there is a line outside getting them to go. They have a window where you can watch the dumplings being made. Sometimes ... I think it is better NOT to see how they make what you eat :-)

This we think is the old City Temple. The book seemed to indicate that we were at the right place, but nothing inside seemed to look like a temple.

This is one of the side-streets that we passed .. more of an alley than anything else. From what I can gather, the way Shanghai is really situated now, you have large buildings that take up most of the width of a city block, but then behind these buildings, you have little alleys with smaller residences. You walk by and look down these alleys and you are liable to see all kinds of things. Some alleys are packed with little carts and shops where (I assume) the locals go to get things to eat and buy things.

We turned up this one road which is supposed to be a main market street, and there were a lot of small stores and things that wouldn't even rate as being called a "store". Here is a normal-looking fruit and vegetable market (although mostly fruits).

Then came the fish. Here you can see various kinds of fish just laying out. In other places, they have them in little tubs of water still alive and flippin' around. Guess that is how you know your fish is fresh!. We saw fish, eels, little crabs, snails, and some things we have no idea what were.

This is the Dajing Tower, which was originally part of the city defensive wall. It sits at the corner of Dajing Road and Renmin Road. Renmin road follows the line of the walls that used to encirclethe Old City. The Dajing Tower is in the traditional southeastern Chinese style and supposedly contains a little museum with a model of the old city walls as ell as an exhibition of black and white photos. However, it was a little late on a Sunday so we didn't even bother to check if the museum even still existed.

At that point, it was getting a little late and so we headed on over to dinner. We had gone to lunch at a Kebab place in The Cool Docks and the owner of that had branched out and opened a new Thai restaurant over by People's Square and People's Park, so we decided to give that a try since the food at the Kabab place was pretty good. It had a really nice interior and the food was quite good as well ... Thai Aroma is the name (in case anybody reading this ends up in Shanghai).