Michael and I had made a pack that we would use one day of every weekend and get out together to go exploring. Today would be no exception. Destination…. People’s Square.
What to expect….
People's square is a spectacular space in the heart of the city. It is a garden-type open space surrounded by buildings and public facilities for administration, cultural activities, transportation and commerce. The People's Park, People's Mansion and Shanghai Museum are sitting on the central axis. The central square lies between People's Mansion and Shanghai Museum with two smaller squares on each side. The total area covers up to 1,806,600 square meters. The central square is arranged with a 320-square-meter water fountain, a Shanghai map and the ground is all laid in granite stone. There are 36 lights with stereo around the central square and 6 pieces of relief which reflect the history and culture of Shanghai.
Two small pieces of grasslands are decorated with flower terraces and sculptures. The large square is circled with a green belt made up of camphor trees, pines and shrubbery. A stone path, lined with benches, wanders all through the green belt.
People's square is also the converging point where metro line one meets line two. From the square you can get to many shopping centers. Leaving metro line one, tourists enter a street where famous shops from Hong Kong assemble and can also get to Dimei shopping mall, a shopping center like a maze. Going from metro line two, you can get to an old street lined with old-styled jewelry shops, restaurants and teahouses and so on, which reminds you of the old days. From the entrance to metro line one to the no 9 entrance of metro line two, lays an underground department store and a restaurant from which you can also get to New World City, yet another shopping mall. And just around the corner from that, the Rodeo Drive of Shanghai…the famous Nanjing road, a shopper’s paradise.
Now … on with our expedition… we are planned out, backpacks loaded, money, camera……and we step out of the apartment building… OH NO... it is starting to rain!!! Back in to get the umbrella’s… a little rain is not going to stop us. So armed with our umbrella’s, we set off for the Metro.
We boarded Line 2 and headed for People’s Square… riding the subway is pretty uneventful now that we are seasoned metro travelers.
We get to People’s Square and head out of the station to the street. There are many different exits depending on where you want to go. We picked one that would lead us out to People’s Park. As we emerged from the subway we were happy to see that is was not raining… just a light intermittent mist.
Right after we got across the street and began to survey the area, we are approached by a young Chinese man. He tells us he is from Beijing going to University and asks if we are American. He is anxious to practice his English. During our cultural training we were told not to be alarmed if we were approached by young people while we were out and about. It is not uncommon for the youth to want to practice with English speaking people. So we talked about 15 minutes and he shared with us the best places to go in the area. He was very curious about us too and asked the whole gambit of ‘what, when, where, and how’ questions. We really needed to move… so we thanked him and eased away.
Onward… through the main gates and boom… we are stopped again by a group of young girls wanted to know if we speak English… they want to practice too. If we stop for everyone wanting to practice English, we are not going to make much progress today. We smiled and wished them a happy day and continued on our way.
We wonder through a little of the park and discover older Chinese woman practicing Chinese movement or exercising, groups of men chatting, children playing in the park and lots of people just doing what we were… wondering and looking. There were beautiful flowers and landscaping and the walkways meandered around little landscaping themes. We even stumbled upon an amusement park… what a surprise. There were quite a few rides… from a carrousel to bumper cars. We found our way to the street… not so much by choice, but purely by accident.
Although we had only scratched the surface of the park… we found ourselves across the street from a mall… and a quick survey revealed a huge sign hanging from the corner shop….. HERSHEY’S…. ummmmm… Chocolate! And with any luck at all… American chocolate! So we plotted our path to get across the street and to the Hershey store…and a bonus… Starbuck’s is right next door!! My chocoholic husband could not wait to get across the street… and since this was a really busy street, we had to cross the cross-street on our side and then over the busy street. These had to be the longest lights in Shanghai. But the scenery is great… this is right by the sidewalk… can you tell what he is trying to say….’Hurry!!!’ We still had not gotten across the streets at this point.
We quickly made our way inside and it was wall to wall Hersey’s Candies…bags or a variety of decorative cups and tins… stuffed animals with the logo. How do you choose when it is so expensive and there are so many varieties? We wondered around for probably 15 minutes trying to decide what treat we would take home with us. The smallest bags were priced equal to 4.25 USD… which is double+ the cost in the US for the same size bag. OK… we went a little nuts (no pun intended)… Almond Joy’s and a Heath bar for me…Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a Hershey bar for Michael… and Hugs/kisses to share. And much to our surprise… they take American credit cards… yeehaw!! We don’t have to spend our RMB’s (cash). I can’t tell you exactly what we spent…but it was way too much for CANDY!! But we are smiling!!!
With our chocolate fix in the backpack, it is on to the Starbuck’s…almost. Out of the corner of my eye I see a sign… soft serve … Hershey’s chocolate ice cream!!! Michael spotted it about the same time. Why is it when there is a lack of a particular something… that is the very thing you crave the most? Ice cream is one of those things. Don’t get me wrong, there is ice cream here… but it too is sky high expensive to buy in the grocery and the only American brands I have seen is Haagen Dazs and Nestle’s. So when I see places like Cold Stone Creamery and now this… well, you just cannot pass it up. So we indulged... went for the medium size and skipped the coffee. It was soft serve, but not just regular, it had Hershey syrup swirled in it! We both were like kids with wide eyes and broad grins. It was so yummy!!! We made our way to the street and found a place to stand and enjoy every drop. Ok.. I am drooling here just thinking back on it. So enough about this and on with the day…..
Next stop is the Shanghai Museum. We think we see it in the distance so we head to the corner to cross the street. The only way to get there is to cross the street and go through the pedestrian tunnel. Pretty cool huh!!! We thought so too… see the picture below.
So into the tunnel we go… there are so many people headed to who knows where because this tunnel intersects and veers many directions. Thank goodness it is well marked. And there are vendors lining the walls selling everything you may or may not need or want… from wallets to purses and lots of junk in between. It seems that is a way of life here. You have to learn to ignore them and keep walking when they come after you. That seems to be their queue that you are not interested. If you try to be polite and tell them ‘no thank you’… they figure they have your attention and become even more determined to sell you something.
Another thing we noticed in the course of the day, there were only a handful of beggars and street people. The most we have seen in all our outings and there were maybe only 4-5 all day. Which I really found surprising given the size of the city and this area is considered the city center.
Through the tunnel and we are out and standing on the grounds in front of the Museum. Time for a few pictures to give you a hint of what is around here.
We move fast don’t we? Hong Kong Shopping Center is actually an underground shopping area that specializes in products from Hong Kong… or so I read. We did not take time to head down to it, but maybe next time. I am quite confident we will be back. And the landscaping and flowers are gorgeous… and I can only imagine what they will look like once we really see some warmer weather. It is in the 50’s or below most days.
The Shanghai Museum is one of the only free Museums that we have found. It is run by the government and there is military presence all in the building. You must go through a metal detector and your belongings go through an x-ray scanner. It was like security at the airport without having to take off your shoes.
The museum is 4 levels… so we headed to the top and would work our way down a floor at the time. First exhibition is the history of the Chinese currency. We walked the entire wing… hoping to see something more interesting than the last glassed area. The oldest currency looked like knives with a little hole in the handle. Then for centuries it was basically round circles of various sizes with square cut outs in the middle. The last couple of areas got very interesting, but I must admit… I was glad when we completed this hall.
The next exhibition was dedicated to the different clothes or costumes. This area was really interesting to me. We actually took quite a few pictures in this display.
Is that mask great or what? The masks were pretty funny. There were a couple for a husband and his wife… if they really looked like the masks… they were truly a strange looking pair… oh yeah… one for the auntie too… she was a sight!!
From the costumes to the Jade exhibit…. Now that was incredible!!! There were pieces of carved jade, albeit crude, that date to 5000 BC. I was blown away. It is so amazing that… first of all… they have pieces intact from that long ago and second, we were tracing history in carved jade pieces and the whole evolution of that skill. To see pieces that were around the time of Christ on earth was just overwhelming! Unfortunately no cameras in this area… although I did see people taking pictures, I respected the rules.
Next stop was the furniture exhibit. The first thing I noticed here… the chairs were really high off the ground. I expected the chairs to be lower than normal due to the height of the Chinese people, but that was not the case.
This is a six poster bed…king size. The screen to the right is carved ivory. It was incredibly detailed as were most of the carvings.
The furniture was pretty interesting, but the slow walk through the museum had done us in. We determined that we could easily walk 10 miles, but the slow moving and standing through the museum was too hard on our backs and we would do a floor each visit. Aside from the fact we had been in there for the better part of 3 hours and only covered one floor.
So down the escalators we went and to the front doors we headed. It was raining again… umbrella’s up! There was a really cute couple taking pictures in front of the museum as we were passing. They asked if we could snap a photo of them. I totally understood that… take a look at our pictures… one or the other but never both in the same picture. See our together picture below… in the rain!!!! Thanks to the young couple that snapped this one!!!!
We are pretty much starving by now… and we have planned…almost everything…but not where we wanted to eat…oops! So we figure we can find a place and I have a places couple still in my handy notes book. It all sounds pretty easy... right? We catch a cab and we are good…. WRONG! We have nothing to translate the English address to Chinese. The application that would make that translation for us on Michael’s blackberry was unavailable.
There is one thing we have learned… without the address in Chinese characters… we do not get where we need to go. Showing Chinese characters to the cab driver is essential. Even when we are going home and try to just say our address to the driver, he pleads ignorance. And we know we are saying that right.
It had stopped raining, so we head out on foot towards the Bund… I know there are restaurants there that have been rated very high. Either we have crummy luck or something… the street we decide to take to get us there… nothing that even remotely looked promising turned up. We happened upon a mall, of a sort. We are thinking there are bound to be restaurants in a mall. Well that is what we get for thinking. There are places to eat… but all in Chinese and nothing looked promising.
We did however; notice an entrance to the subway. We were tired and hungry… we gave up and hopped the metro for home. We would stop at Julie’s Food Experience for a bite to eat once we got to Creativity Street and then a quick 5 minutes to home from there. It was a good predictable place and we were so hungry. We did not want to stop into a restaurant we knew nothing about only to find ourselves with a disappointing meal.
So we hit Julie’s and with a very full tummy and an exhausting wet day, we headed for home. Every expedition teaches us to plan better… and this was no exception!!!
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