Shanghai old town

After checking in to the hotel we started our mini vacation in Shanghai. Of course we start with the old town or City God Temple as it also is called which is what the Chinese name 城隍庙 (Chénghuángmiào) means.

Famous house in the water

Famous red fish in the water

A house in the famous Yuyuan garden

End mountain end road. This is an old saying in China and means something like, when you come to the end of the mountain there will be an end of the road, but if you turn around you will see that the road continues on the other side of the mountain. That can be described further with if you have a problem, turn around and look at the problem with a different view and you will see how to solve your problem. Wow... you see how effective the Chinese characters are. Just four characters to fill all this meaning.

This path are two! Actually on the other side of the thin wall there is a similar path. One is for men and the other is for women.

Then there are small holes or windows in the wall for the two to steal looks at each others and maybe stay for a quick talk or a kiss.

Detail of a plant in the garden

A small house on a fake mountain

Chinese grass

A beautiful view. Maybe my future summer house on the Swedish north east coast.

A fish with a huge brain?

Calligraphy master

The result

Hotel Yun's Paradise

Today we checked out from the old hotel we have lived in so far in Shanghai. It was a quite disgusting hotel but cheap. We pay 200 yaun per night including free Internet and Chinese breakfast.

But now it was time to try something more fancy during a two day vacation. Yun's Paradise! This hotel cost 1500 yuan per night but we are lucky that they are doing major constructions in the area around the hotel so the price is set to half and we pay only 750 yuan per night. The constructions in the area are that they are building fancy malls and high houses all around so when that is done the hotel room prices will probably double to 3000 per night.

The good thing about the hotel is that it is located just besides the old town and within a walking distance to the famous shopping street Nanjing road.

I have only good things to say about this hotel even if I can believe that you can live more fancy in China. This is anyway the most fancy I have lived anywhere so far. Some pictures...

The corridor leading to our room

The room entrance seen from inside.

The bed! The best bed in China ever! I miss that bed... To the right of the bed we have a couch, a small table and a sofa.

Working desk by the window, a small dining table to the left and closest we have another sofa for watching TV. The TV is a huge flat wide-screen HDTV that is turnable. At the moment it is turned to the bed.

The bathroom

The bathtub

The beauty place

Shower and toilet

Jing'an Temple

Today we went to the Jing'an temple in the middle of a fancy commercial area in Shanghai. As you walk down the street it is hard to imagine that you are on your way to an ancient looking temple. We see expensive brand stores like Marc Jacobs and luxurious hotels. We see businessmen and young stylish kids. None of them giving the impression or feeling that we are getting closer to a Buddhist temple. There are sky scrapes everywhere and new ones are being built even higher. I almost started to wonder if Girlwing knew the right direction or if we were about to getting lost. But suddenly... there it is standing between the expensive mall and the sky scrapes.

You can see the temple here in the middle of the picture below. It is the houses with the ancient Chinese roofs. All around you see the sky scrapes and the x-mas decorated malls.

So what do you do in a Chinese temple? As a tourist you walk around and look at all the interesting details and try to take pictures without disturbing the local people or the gods. As a more or less true believer you will probably do the following...

Light some incense

When it burns you can blow out the flames and the aromatic smoke will get produced.

Bow three times to the north, east, south and west

Then leave your incense...

...in the beautiful "ash tray"...

...for others to enjoy.

Then you can throw coins in this "thing" and hope for some blessing or luck. If you are able to throw the coin up on one of the small roofs you will be more lucky. The higher you get the more blessed you will be.

Then we meet the fat and happy Buddha...

...and the rest of the gods...

...to whom you pray. You pray to different gods depending on what you want to achieve. The gods have different roles in life. You pray to one god for health and another one for a good hunting and another one for good results in a weiqi tournament.

It is an active temple with a bunch of monks

The temple is a collection of beautiful ancient style buildings

This is the newest building still in construction

In most of the buildings there are big rooms like this one with a different good statue in each. This is Guanyin.

Everywhere we pray to a lot of goods

A beautiful detail on a pole outside the temple. Probably not related.

Come and buy BBQ!

Come and buy BBQ! 3 sticks for 10 yuan!

Or buy from me, one stick for 4 yuan...

Maybe read some magazine with your BBQ?

Then go here to buy delicious snacks like all kinds of dried fruits, nuts and meat.

Man vs. machine

The first year that I went to Shanghai to visit Girlwings parents I bought them a food processor. They liked it, for making juice... but it was not good enough for chopping vegetables. The machine makes the pieces too small and that makes the food not as nice to chew. So the old fashion handicraft way is still superior.

Old town by night

I just want to show how the old town looks like at night. It is beautiful in its own way with all the lights. But I must say that I prefer it during the day when you see all the beautiful colours and the wonderful shapes of the ancient China.

Shanghai bullet train

My parents had told us about the fantastic Transrapid maglev bullet train of Shanghai to Pudong airport.

The train accelerates up to 431 km/h and keeps that speed for maybe 30 seconds before it softly start to hit the brakes. Halfway the train meet the other train coming from the other direction closely on the left side. You better be prepared because otherwise you might think there was an explosion on the train.

So we had to try it! It was really cool! As you can see in the picture there is a display showing the current speed of the train. When we got to top speed everybody wanted to take pictures. One stupid businessman, who sat behind us, had to stand up in the way of everybody else to take his picture with his mobilephone camera.

Shanghai park

We went to a public park in the northern parts of Shanghai. It is supposed to be the largest and most popular park in Shanghai. Usually it costs a couple of yuan to enter buy now it was free for everyone. Maybe because it is in the middle of the winter and not as nice as in the spring time.

But still it was quite a lot of people, especially if you compare with a Swedish park in december. It was mostly older retired people doing stuff to make the time fly. There were people singing Chinese opera karaoke, playing ancient instruments, playing games, dancing lessons, flying with dragon kites and just regular socializing with talk among old and new friends.

Too bad that I don't have pictures of this but above you can see something else I found in the park. Amazing what you can find in the middle of the winter. :)