When one thinks of colonial China, the China of rickshaws, Charlie Chan, the Sassoons and teeming masses in a seaport, Shanghai likely comes to mind. It does for me. It’s a huge city of over 24 million and China’s largest seaport (and largest city). The third tallest skyscraper in the world is here, as is the Bund, an area with over fifty colonial area buildings along the waterfront.
Our docking position was special, on a bend in the Huangpu River, in the center of the city and across from the spectacular skyline. The bow of the ship faced the Bund. The river is crowded with ferries, pleasure craft, and smaller cargo ships. We may be the largest ship allowed on this waterway.
We have two days in Shanghai and for our first morning we participated in the excursion “Shanghai highlights.” Except for the included visit to the Yuyuan Garden, the tour was a disappointment. We really didn’t get much of a tour of the highlights. Still, as I noted above, our ship’s position on the waterfront gave us a great view of central Shanghai, including the Shanghai Tower (2073 feet), the Jin Mao Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the Bund, the former British area of Shanghai. That first evening we enjoyed the brightly lit cityscape, which included well lit ferries and other craft on the Huangpu.
In the garden and several of its many rooms:
The shopping area surrounding the garden:
A couple of asides. English speakers are often inflicted with ums and ers while speaking. Even worse is the dreaded insertion of “like” within every other sentence. Chinese speakers of English have their own common pause filler: “yes” or “yeah” between sentences, as if assuring themselves that what they have just said was useful.
A bit of inside information came to us about Viking’s joint venture with China regarding this ship. The sale of the Viking Sun to a Chinese firm and the conversion of the entire crew to a Chinese one was not, shall we say, voluntary. The remaining westerners in the crew are there to complete the training of their replacements. One can presume Viking’s sole surviving role in the arrangement is marketing and sales. China is feeling its oats.
We blew one excursion opportunity, or at least I did, as I made the reservations. Virtually the entire ship went to an evening performance of acrobats in Shanghai. I, for some reason, overlooked this opportunity. As a consolation prize, we were invited to a hot-pot dinner, served under the eave on a deck just outside the restaurant—during what at times was a heavy rain. Fortunately the wait staff assisted us in determining how long to cook each offering and, yes, we were able to eat the corn on the cob sections with our chopsticks. Frances cheated and stuck a chopstick through the center to hold it. Hint: Don’t wear a fresh shirt to a hotpot dinner. The probability of not splashing an oil drop on one’s clothes approaches zero.
Our tour on the second day was a tremendous improvement over the first. Our guide, a life-long Shanghai resident, was clear in his English, informative and funny. We got the highlights tour we were hoping for, plus tales of his younger days, when four and five families crowded into small, shared apartments, often hungry and, if lucky, getting meat once a month using government-allocated coupons. He said the ideal life is one with an American house, Chinese cuisine, Jewish deep pockets and a Japanese wife. He started to describe the undesirable opposite: a Japanese house and then, hesitating with a laugh, said he couldn’t remember if the next was American food or an American wife.
The complex has many temples, each devoted to different buddhas and religious icons.
I’d love to end this posting with a short video that shows our night view of Shanghai but the internet connection won’t allow this. So enjoy these stills.
After a sea day, our next port of call is Quindao.