Around the Town

Monday I ended up getting lost (which I maintain is the best way to get to know a city) and missed the French Concession and ended up back on the Bund... which overlooks the river and the Pudong (a new section of Shanghai). It was quite a distance and ended up being a 6-7 hour urban hike. Simply great to see all the activity and movement in the city.

Along the Bund is a small (and still renovating museum) that has some great pictures of the Bund over the course of the last 100 years. Pretty amazing to see the development. I also chatted with a young lady who works at the museum. She is a student at Shanghai University studying modern Chinese history. Over the course of the conversation, she told me her favorite movies: "Home Alone", "Forest Gump", and "Brokeback Mountain". I was a little surprised by this last one and asked her why. She said that she loved the images of the mountains, forest, horses and cowboys. Of course Brokeback was very popular in San Francisco, but for different reasons!

For dinner I went to a Nepali (as in Nepal... not Napoli!) restaurant with Susanne, Clea, and another fellow Stanford-guy Justin (who now works for the State Department). My first time with Nepali food and I like! It is kinds of lighter version of Indian.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was a museum day. I went to the Shanghai Museum which holds a lot of traditional Chinese art. For me, the most impressive part of the museum was a portion visiting from a Spanish museum that featured mostly Spanish painters from Titian to Goya. In particular a painting by Reuben ("Saturn Devouring His Son") caught my attention.

I then went to the French Concession and visited a small, but really interesting, museum on the grounds of the first Chinese Communist Party meeting. Amazing how this group of 13 would set the groundwork for the Communist party taking over all of China.

The French Concession is a very interesting place... architecturally very European (despite its name many different nationalities inhabited the region) but culturually has been taken over by the Chinese. Picture sweeping European avenues with stores spilling out on the streets carrying all manner of Chinese nicknacks. There is also a great area called Xin Tian Di... which is a bit of a tourist area, but has a great promenade lined with outdoor restaurants and cafes. I spent part of the afternoon sipping tea and people watching.

For dinner I went to a Shanghai-nese restuarant with Susanne and two of her (non-Stanford) friends... Jeremy and Christine. Shanghai-nese is noted for its sweetness and adding a bit of extra sugar to most dishes.

One other thing to note... if you are ever in Shanghai anywhere near Nanjing Road, DO NOT GO TO TEA WITH ANYONE! This is a scam that I heard about and was attempted on me many, many times. Someone will come and ask you where you are from and then if you would like to go to tea and become friends. They will then take you to a restaurant and order a bunch of whisky and stick you with a 500 yuan ($60-70USD) tab. They get a cut from the restuarant. My advice is to go "Borat" on them... picture the following dialogue:
Scam Artist (SA): Hello, where are you from?
You in a Borat voice (Y): My name is Borat and I am from Kazakhstan.
SA: Are you hear by yourself?
Y: I like you, you want to be my friend?
SA: Yes, let's go talk more over some tea.
Y: I like sex, it is nice.
(... and so on and so forth)
Alternatively, you can offer to take them to a nearby Starbucks and they will quickly leave!