Shanghai means "On The Sea" - Our first day in China

March 7th, 2024

Shanghai - Day 1

Where do I start? Before Vi and I got to China, we were a little apprehensive about what to expect. Luckily our first excursion had a very good guide, a young woman named Lu. She spoke very good English, and she told us more about real, everyday life in Shanghai … more than just giving us the standard company line.

While I like to tell you the things we do when we come into a port, in this case the port or city or country may be the more interesting story. We are in China now. More specifically Shanghai … 上 (shàng/zan, "upon") and 海 (hǎi/hae, "sea"), together meaning "On the Sea". This is a small little town of 23 million people, none of which own a piece of land themselves. Now I am not going to get into a political discussion here but….

Do you know where 23 million people live? High rise apartment buildings. Some new, some old, some older. I am not talking about hundreds of places. I am not talking about thousands of places. I am talking about tens of thousands of high-rise apartment buildings … basically cities of high rises; all with half of their belongings hanging out the windows on long brackets mounted to the building “hanging our shirts in the dirty breeze” (Simon and Garfunkel). This is not good - this is not bad. This is just how it is. There are more cars here than in most of Japan where the mass transportation issue has been taken care of. In China, they also have trains and bus systems but not to the extent of Japan. Scooters are the economical way for these folks to move about and there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them scooting around.

As everyone knows, everything is made in China, even my clothes are happy to be home, so factories are huge and they obviously need workers. Those workers need places to live. You know the rest. Also, all that product needs to go somewhere, and the shipping traffic is like nothing I have seen before. In fact, Shanghai is the busiest shipping port in the world competing with Singapore which we will visit in a few more stops. Tankers, trawlers, containers ships, and more ships than I can name are all on the move here. Ours is just one of thousands of vessels coming and going. Some did not look very seaworthy to my untrained eye. We have not seen any junks but I am thinking Beijing or Hong Kong will be the place for those. It was just a very eye-opening thing for me and Vialula.

First day activity was a trip to the Jade Buddha Temple. It is an active temple, and we saw monks walking around and lots of other worshippers while here. It is rather discomforting to be here where so many locals have come to “worship or pray” to their particular god, and all of a sudden 3 bus loads of American cruisers are invading with camera phones, clicking pictures. That would be like sitting in church at home and having a bus of tourists walk in and start snapping away as we sing our hymns. But they seemed used to it.

An impressive place, the big Jade Buddha is the most famous Buddha here. It weighs 4 tons and is carved out of one piece of jade. It is considered priceless. We were not allowed to photograph it. It also houses three reclining Buddhas which were quite beautiful and very unique.

There were also three golden Buddhas. The one in the middle is of the Buddha, the left one is Amitabha and the right is Bhaisajyaguru. These three were surrounded by the Twenty Divas. There are covered in gold. It was quite a sight to behold.

Worshippers were praying to Buddha, burning incense everywhere, and I mean burning. Not a little stick but handfuls just tossed into large fires. Smoke and incense filled the air and was everywhere.

Yu Garden was next on our itinerary. It is a five-acre garden smack dab in the middle of the city that reflects the classic garden style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It has 42 places for meditation, reflection, and worship (except when 3 tour buses stop there at the same time!) Built 400 years ago it has been renovated several times but is still in the original style. Vi absolutely loved it. Very interesting rocks (so many), tulip trees just beginning to bloom, beautiful flowers, flowing grasses, towers, ponds, fish …. Goodness, it was pretty, but we are still waiting for the "riot" of cherry trees promised in our brochure!!!

Our last stop was in Old Shanghai. This area is covered in local mom and pop stores, modern stores like Peet's Coffee and Haagen Dazs, various food booths and restaurants, still decorated from their New Year. 2024 is the Year of the Dragon. People stop and shop during lunch hours and tourists crawl all over this beautiful place. The older styles are in direct contrast to the the newer overpowering high-rise buildings and office buildings. Old Shanghai was here first, and the skyline has grown up around it, including structures like the iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

The sights, sounds and aromas of local foods filled the air as we wandered around this area stuck in time. Fried prawns and squid on a stick are food I recall, along with sticks of candied strawberries. Several things I had no idea what it was! We changed some US cash for the local Yuan, and Vi bought a giant fried pancake with chives. She loved the crispy, savory treat. The shops were filled with fans and traditional flutes, pear shaped guitars called pipas and other souvenirs. All these were interspersed with more conventional stores like The Disney Store. Who knew there was a Shanghai Disneyland?!!

The most interesting thing in Old Shanghai were the tourists who were staring at us and taking our pictures! We were taking pictures of them, and they were taking pictures of us! They don’t see people like us very often. Our height, shapes, eye and hair color stand out ALOT, so we were being gawked at as much as the sights of Old Shanghai!