Up, Up, and Away...

Shanghai, November 4, 2007 (Sunday)

Another laidback sightseeing day. I went back to Yu Yuan, hoping that all the tourists had miraculously gone home. No luck. I did get some yummy fried bits on a stick though.

I made my way to the Bund, and then up to the Bund Tourist Tunnel, which connects the two sides of the Huang Pu River: Puxi, which is where a lot of the action has been historically, and Pudong, which is where a lot of the action is starting to go.

The guidebooks recommend a one-way trip on the Bund Tourist Tunnel. However, the pricing for the round trip made more economic sense for me, since it is only a fraction more for the return trip back. So I went with the round trip.

Dudes. How to describe the Bund Tourist Tunnel? At its very core, it’s an underground tunnel that you cross in a tram car. Simple enough. Now let’s add to the picture. Imagine all the neon lights in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Nanjing Road were eaten by, say, a fire-breathing dragon, who subsequently barfed up all of those lights into the Bund Tourist Tunnel, resulting in a haphazard, neon and Christmas-light extravaganza; A whacked out, psychedelic experience. The tram ride takes about 5 minutes and begins with this sense of grand expectation…kind of like a ride at an amusement park. Then…lights. And more lights. Lights that twinkle. Lights in different colors. Large video screens showing, you guessed it, colorful lights. The lights were arranged in different patterns and twinkled in sync with the atmospheric music blaring in the tram car. Someone had also thoughtfully put up wind sock figures (a scarecrow, a ghost), which were relics of Halloween, I suspect. The figures shimmered eerily as we glided past them. And then the ride was over. So that’s why the books recommended a single visit! Oh goodie, I get to do that one more time…

Bemused by the experience, I weave my way to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the iconic, space-age, slightly phallic tower that is 350 meters high, making it, I think, the third highest in the world. Being so close to it really gives you an idea of its size. The pricing for the tower admission is based on where you want to visit. You can opt to go to one, two, or all of the spheres (the 90, 160, and 350 meters), or just the revolving restaurant (at 160 meters). I opted for the whole enchilada, all the spheres, plus admission to the Shanghai History Museum on the ground floor.

We were herded like cattle into an elevator that took us to the middle sphere (160) first. The ride up was slow and allowed us to savor the pressure building up in our ears. Then, onto the observation deck. The view was amazing. The number of tourists was amazing. The incessant picture-snapping and V for Victory posing was amazing. Kidding aside, to see the Bund from this vantage point was a true treat. The day was clear, so we were able to see pretty far out. You really do get a sense of the scale and scope of Shanghai when you have a bird’s eye view. I boarded another elevator to the next sphere, at 350 meters. This sphere is smaller, and is also known as “the Space Cabin”. It was slightly less crowded than the 160 meter sphere, but still had a good amount of traffic. The higher height provided a wider perspective, and also more picture taking opportunity. I climbed a small spiral staircase up to the very top, which is a very small space, with all-pink windows, that provided no real difference in vantage point. You just climb it so you can say you made it to the top of the tower. The top sphere had a couple of exhibits, an autograph wall dotted with flags and handwritten messages from world leaders, as well as a Sister City display case showcasing gifts given to Shanghai from its Sister Cities. San Francisco gave Shanghai a bell and a vase, if memory serves.

After that, I made my way down to the 90 meter sphere, which was an outdoor observation deck. It was nice to breathe fresh air, as well as gain a closer vantage point. The 90 meter level also sported a space-themed theme, with some random attractions (astronomy and astrology exhibit, ET statues, a “dizziness” chamber, a roller coaster.) Then one final elevator ride in a clear glass elevator different from the one that we used to ascend. One note about the elevators. They were all manned by operators who recited some fun facts to us, in two languages, Mandarin and English, during the rides. Regulating the traffic and flow of the elevators require much planning and staff, I expect, as visitors essentially had to line up for everything, including boarding elevators.

The final stop in the tower is the fantastic Shanghai History Museum. I am an absolute sucker for models and recreations, and this museum delivers. One the first floor, “getting around” was the theme, as there was a charming display of land transportation options throughout Shanghai’s history, from rickshaws to horse-drawn carriages, to the first hugely ornate motor cars, then the pimp wheels of the 60s and 70s, then locally-manufactured cars, including the ubiquitous Volkswagen Santana, which is the standard issue taxicab in Shanghai at present. A couple of antique trolley cars were also on display, with original retro ads on them. I would also like to note that the curators make an effort to bring these displays to life, by painting backgrounds of Shanghai streets, as well as placing mannequins dressed in period clothing in, on, or near the vehicles.

The next floor was huge and housed several exhibit halls, basically mapping Shanghai’s history from the 1800s to present. The exhibits included painstaking reproductions of an average person’s life in the past, their home, the shops they would visit, etc. Then there were models of Shanghai’s changing landscape, particularly the Bund, as well as scale models of various iconic places during various periods in time. If you saw my LegoLand pictures, you know I am absolutely smitten with scale model reproductions. To see wonderfully-detailed models of places in Shanghai throughout time was amazing. The Bund, Nanjing Road, the French Concession…all in perfect, precious detail, all beautifully lit. Aside from the miniature models, there were recreations of various streets. To be able to walk through these exhibits, you could almost imagine being in Shanghai during the 1930s. (Cue music, where’s my cashmere overcoat and white scarf?) There were some cool interactive bits as well, including a green screen display that allowed you to see yourself in a 1930s Shanghai street. The recreation of the early stock market was a hoot. Inside this beautiful scale model of the tri-level stock exchange, with real wood furniture and details like tiny exchange slips in tact, the designer decided that rather than use actual dolls (which would need to be 8 to 10 inches high) they would use glossy cardboard cutouts of people to show how crowded the stock exchange was. They must have had fun with it…the individual cutouts were from screen captures from old Chinese period movies! Imagine different people with different expressions, some wacky and screwball, all placed together to give off a cheeky aura of pandemonium. I think I’d love to work here…any job that allows you to screencap and cut out wacky characters from wacky movies and use them as cutouts for exhibits is aok in my book. Or, as in LegoLand, I’d love to shrink down in size and just live here. If the museum exhibits really do come alive when the museum closes, ala the Ben Stiller movie, then sign me up.

It was dinnertime when I finally emerged from the tower. After three weeks of gorging on excellent Chinese cuisine, it was inevitable that I want something else. I was, in fact, craving a big, fat, juicy hamburger, with crispy, salty fries. No grey fast food burger and soggy potato sticks, though. A proper burger. With proper fries. The huge, sparkling Super Brand Mall was near the Pearl Tower, so I ducked in, as I recall reading that a nice sports bar type joint with very good burgers was housed there. I noticed that there was a Hooters --yes that Hooters-- in the mall…and while utterly tempted (how surreal would it be to say I went to Hooters in Shanghai?), I decided Blue Frog it was. It’s a cute little mellow sports bar that serves sports bar fare. I ordered the classic Blue Frog Burger, with cheese. When it arrived, with a heaping mound of crispy golden steak cut fries, I thought I was going to weep with joy. Pink tender beef, fried bits, and ketchup. USA! USA! I think I must be a little homesick.

Yes, dammit, despite all the wonderful, exciting, new things I am experiencing here, I do miss home. I miss my dearest beloved Tivo, er, friends and family, I miss being with people who get me and love me, I miss being able to communicate eloquently, (ok adequately!), I miss the crisp cold clear SF air. And I miss the TV! I had made a conscious decision to not spoil myself by reading any eppie recaps, and not download any eppies while here. (OK, granted, the conscious decision was forced upon me when I discovered the websites that I would usually go to for said downloads and recaps are in fact blocked here…details, schmetails.) But I digress. It’s not to say TV here is bad. It’s actually got some cool shows. There are dubbed versions of old TVB soap operas, as well as a dubbed Mexico’s Ugly Betty. Editor’s Note: Very surreal. I watch it for language purposes (and I must admit, I am picking up a lot from just watching TV in Mandarin). The storyline and production values are pretty awful, especially in comparison to the US version. It just seems very soap opera-y, insanely cheesy and over the top, with none of the tongue in cheek comedy and fabulousness of the US version.

There are also lots of reality shows. One is kinda like the Amazing Race, only set in America…teams from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and the US travel across America doing various challenges. It’s not a race per se, as they all travel together at the same pace. They do challenges based on different localities, and are judged by local experts (ie cooking, dance, knot-making, barrel-making, rapping, etc) It’s kind of interesting to see how America is depicted (very foreign). Another reality show called European Challenge is more like the Amazing Race in that teams are in Europe racing against each other while doing challenges. I must say, I was hooked on that one for a while, even sobbing when my favorite team got eliminated. (PMS, you know. Sidebar: That was the first time since Lasik that so many real tears fell from eyes. ‘Bout damn time. You need a good cry, sometimes.) I also religiously watch an Entertainment Tonight-esque show that details the fluffy gossipy happenings of major Asian stars. There are also quite a few travel and food shows, which I’m also a sucker for.

I also discovered a dubbed version of Project Runway! Absolutely surreal. It’s last season, not the current one (which I need to watch, so no spoilers, dammit) so I know who won the different challenges, and have a basic idea of what’s being said. Hearing it all in Chinese is really surreal. And hearing Heidi’s “Auf Viederson” (sp?) being replaced with “Zai Jian” is just wrong! I must admit, I was quite tickled pink by it, though.

I also get HBO Asia, which is way different from HBO in the US. They don’t show the original HBO series (though evidently they do show Big Love occasionally.) Rather, it’s essentially all movies, all the time, all pristinely captioned with Chinese characters. Some movies are fairly recent (within the past couple years). Others aren’t. The programming director must be on crack, or picked up lots of crappy movie licenses for cheap, because a lot of the movies are gawdawful and/or completely random. Free Willy 2? Gremlins 3? Weird Canadian made-for-TV horror movies? And yes, I still watched them. But that’s besides the point.