Shanghai Scene - Random but Important Stuff

The Pork Dumpling

Gym didn't do extensive enough research on this topic. Don't get me wrong, quite a few pork dumplings were consumed by the Gymster while in Shanghai. The winner of a mid-range sampling of these delicate, umami-tasting, steamed treats was the offering from the Din Tai Fung restaurant in the mall at the base of the Shanghai World Financial Center. These delicacies arrived appropriately hot, in their bamboo steamer and each piece was perfect, there were no holes in the rice dough. To Gym's surprise, not only was there a nice pork and chive filling but there was also some "soup" inside. The liquid remained inside throughout the cooking process allowing for a pleasing squirt of the essence of this artwork, before one bit into the meaty filling. The dough itself was almost translucent and it had you wondering if the filling was wearing enough clothes, however, the dough was sticky and chewy and satisfying. Delicious!

Congee

Gym first discovered congee in Hong Kong in 2011. He does not seek it out in Canada because he believes it won't be the same. And at home, Gym has no time to sit down and savor a steaming bowl of this breakfast porridge eaten by literally billions of asians every morning. Gym's personal goal was to savor a bowl of this glorious gruel with a century egg. Low and behold that condiment as well as several other new ones were available in Shanghai. Gym became hooked on edible peat moss, fermented tofu and pickled knot roots. Together with a good congee these condiments make a meal that is so satisfying!

Congee and the wonderful condiments that you can choose to add to it. Gym was fortunate
to also be able to sample century eggs and the cheaper salted duck eggs.

China Eastern Airlines

Gym and his fetching travel companion have been on many airlines. Some have been accepted by both travelers as top notch. Included in this category are Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Turkish Airlines and Air Canada. (Gym also likes Lufthansa but Mrs. Gym thinks their staff are a little stiff). Now China Eastern is not in that gold medal group but they are not as terrible as all the comments you read on the internet. They were trying hard in Gym's opinion. At the end of this trip Gym will do up a final report on the airline so that his readers can get an unbiased view. Stay tuned!



The Washlet

One of the most amazing learnings of the stop in Shanghai was in the bathroom of the hotel at the Four Seasons Shanghai. Gym and his lovely wife had never seen anything quite like it. It is purpose-built, yet very comfortable. It is very technical, yet simple to use. It welcomes the user as the user comes into the room. It also cleans itself. What a machine! Gym fell in love with it. Yes, we are talking about the Toto S550E Washlet. This baby has a remote controlled bidet. Gym was afraid at first but got hooked after the first time he held the remote in his hand. And it's green too!

"Ecology-minded luxury in a slim design, this WASHLET features the technologically advanced ewater+ system, which mists and cleans the bowl with electrolyzed water after every use. Fully automated, including remote control and heated seat."

What a beauty!

Gym had heard toilets were a big thing in the orient and now he understands why.


This post is being published from the Maldives where Mrs. Gym is getting that beach time she so clearly requested. Gym will provide a final piece regarding the Maldives in short order.

Stay tuned!

Sights of Shanghai - November, 2019

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel

When you write about a visit to Shanghai, you have to talk about two general attractions that dominate everything else in this mega-city; they are the iconic skyline of modern Pudong and the Bund. These two things, situated across the Huangpu River from each other, give Shanghai its unique character.

The Pearl

If the skyline is one of the things that sets Shanghai apart, then it is the Pearl Tower that is the jewel in the crown of that skyline. On their first full day in China, Gym and his lovely boss were hiking along the waterfront pathways on the Pudong side of the river when they came to the base of the tower. They looked up to gaze upon the unique structure. After a brief discourse, they decided to buy 2 tickets to the highest observation deck. Then they got in line. Although it was high season, the line was not too bad and they waited patiently with a mixed crowd of locals and oriental tourists to get on the high-rise elevator. The ride was over in minutes and in spite of the short duration, the elevator attendant even provided a little color in english for our travelers, who were the only obvious non-orientals in the elevator car. At the top, there were great views of Pudong, the Bund and the river in both directions. Then it was time to get back down. That is where it got a little complicated. Now the author believes that they have an elevator that goes directly down to the ground from the top but it must be for friends of Chairman Xi. Gym had unfortunately not been given the pleasure of an introduction to the Chairman, so he and his dear companion, fell in line with a descending group of mandarin speakers and after several short elevator rides later, a deck at a time, they made their way down. The descent strategy was designed to give everyone a chance to buy food and drink, play video games and view a disney-ish propaganda film that showed us how Shanghai would be taken into the future. When they got spit out at the bottom, our travelers were somewhat dazed, yet thrilled that they had just made it out of the tower's IKEA-like exit.

The Bund

Now that they had a good understanding of the layout of the city and could plan an attack on the other sites that they saw from the top of the Pearl, our travelers decided to visit the Bund the next day. The Bund has lots of history, and Gym had come to understand that it was the place where western merchants and bankers set up shop, prior to WW2. Then in WW2 the Japanese invaded in 1941 and made a big mess of the place.You can't read about this while you're in China and have to wait to get the real history from Google after you get out. The problem in getting to the Bund for Gym and Mrs. Gym was that there are no bridges across the river for literally miles in either direction from the Pearl. Sure there are tunnels for the subway system but you can't see the sights on a subway and you could practically be there in minutes if you could just walk. Our travelers ended up taking a taxi for 25 RMB on their their first visit to the Bund. The Taxi tackled the river crossing by speeding underneath it in one of the numerous tunnels built for cars. Gym looked, but there were no sidewalks on the sides of these tunnels. In any event, our travelers enjoyed the Bund, walking the 1500 meters down to the north end on the raised embankment, next to the river. They enjoyed views on both sides of the Huangpu and then they returned at street level, on the sidewalk, in front of the 26 main buildings of various architectural styles that line the riverfront. Today, these building house 5-star hotels, very chi-chi boutiques and  some government offices. It was actually not too crowded when Gym and Mrs. Gym were there. They returned to the hotel by taxi later that day.

Three Skyscrapers

Having camped out at the Four Seasons Hotel in Pudong, our travelers were right next to three of the most impressive high-rises anywhere in the world. During their stay, they were fortunate to be able to check out some of the establishments that were either directly inside these towers or part of the multi-level malls that were built around their bases. The 420 meter, Jin Mao Tower was the first high-rise of the grouping, completed in 1999. The second oldest, the Shanghai World Financial Centre opened in 2008 and tops out at 492 meters. The tallest is the Shanghai Tower which is China's tallest building at 632 meters (127 floors) and it is the newest, with its observation deck being opened to the public in 2017. Together the three towers are an impressive grouping to behold and Gym believes that they give the city its futuristic appeal. Each tower has a hotel operating in a portion of it but the luxury J hotel in the Shanghai Tower has yet to open due to something about it requiring a fire permit. Gym thinks the Pudong Fire Department better work a little closer with the Chairman on this as he makes the rules. Gym and Mrs. Gym spent one evening over cocktails and tapas in Cloud 9, part of the Grand Hyatt hotel, located on the 87th floor of the Jin Mao Tower. Gym had assumed that the Grand Hyatt had a fire permit. That night they watched the start of the light show featuring laser projections and strobe lights that frame the Bund, the Pearl Tower and many buildings in Pudong. The tapas were delicious, especially the calamari.

Yu Gardens

By the time our hero and his lovely companion made their second crossing of the Huangpu River, they had found something really different, the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. The Bund Sightseeing tunnel uses the SK 6000 People Mover to transport riders about 600 meters underneath the river in driverless cars. It costs 50 RMB and 70 RMB for a 2-way ticket. It is very similar to the vehicles on the rides in a Disney theme park. While you make the crossing there is a cheesy, but fun display of projections on the sides of the tunnel wall. This light show is there so that the rider can take his/her mind off the idea of crossing a major river, from below. Our travelers did so safely and and they ascended to the surface on a couple of sets of escalators, emerging next to the KFC. They found themselves mid-Bund and a kilometer or two from their destination, The Yu Gardens was the goal. Yu Gardens is located off the south end of the Bund, behind Gucheng Park. The site dates back to 1559 and the Ming Dynasty and has seen its ups and downs over the centuries, suffering through several wars in which it was severely damaged. Today, it is a very popular exhibit and has been a National Monument since 1982. After a quick tour of the gardens, Gym nabbed a freshly made sesame cracker, from a street merchant. He sampled this crispy treat on the way to the taxi stand. Our travelers sped back under the river to their hotel.

More on Shanghai in our final Chinese post, stay tuned!

The Pearl Tower

The line-up

Looking back at the hotel from the Pearl

The bend in the Huangpu River 

The Bund from the Pearl

Mrs. Gym on the Bund

Fairmont Peace Hotel on the Bund

Garden Bridge originally built in 1856 crosses Suzhou Creek at the
north end of the Bund.

The China Merchant Bank (left). and
Great Northern Telegraph Building (Centre)

The nice wide, pedestrian friendly embankment, next to the river.

The Bund is very popular for wedding photos 

Too bad it is not a clearer day

The Chinese Memorial at the north end of the Bund.

She better wait for a bigger gap in the traffic

Security at the Waldolf Astoria for the Chairman's visit

South end of the Bund

The skyscrapers from the Pearl

Shanghai World Financial Center (left)
Jinmao Tower (center)
Shanghai Tower (right)

The Pearl Tower at dusk from the Jinmao Tower.
 It really stands out during the light show.

Cloud 9 at the top of the Jinmao Tower

A view of the light show from Cloud 9

Yu Gardens

On the Zig-Zag Bridge

Showing up in Shanghai - November, 2019

Wow, both Gym and his lovely companion Mrs Gym, were blown away by Shanghai. They are in agreement that the place has to be seen; to be believed. There is no place in the world where you can experience such an unbelievably clean, modern, efficient and futuristic place. In physical appearances, not quite George Jetson's Orbit City or the Greenich Village of Woody Allen's Sleeper, but our heroic travelers were camped out in a reasonable facsimile of those places. Gym's impression was more like the depiction of Xandar in Guardians of the Galaxy, without the aliens and the space ships.

In the real world, Shanghai is a very green city. The Pudong business district has utilized the very good growing climate to establish wonderful borders between the wide sidewalks and the roadways. And there are very colorful boulevards separating the traffic flows. Pudong also has a tremendous number of parks on both sides of the Huangpu River. Our travelers were fortunate to have a room overlooking the Lujiazui Central Green and also had the good fortune to visit the gigantic Century Park as well as other parks, while in-country. They agreed that the closest similar urban area they know is Singapore.

Pudong's pedestrians enjoy very wide sidewalks and due to the width of the streets and their green borders, very long crosswalks. Flanking Lujaizui Central Green are a second level of walkways about 10 meters above the ground level sidewalk. These upper walkways run for several blocks to the Pearl Tower from the Four Seasons Hotel and enter the second levels of some higher-end, multi-level malls, along the way. The combination of the two levels of pedestrian walkways provide lots of space on two levels for pedestrians in the high season but they were pretty empty when Gym and Mrs. Gym were there in the Fall.

Cleaning things up a little more, there are absolutely no billboards in Shanghai. In fact, there are no ads of any kind anywhere in sight. There is also absolutely no trash anywhere to be seen. There are ample waste baskets for recyclable and non-recyclable waste every 30 meters or so. It was also noted that there was an absence of drive-through fast food places and ugly gas stations in the city. These establishments are there, they are just hidden well. Corner grocery stores, liquor stores and gas stations are located off the main drags in the side-streets below the 5-storey walk-up apartment buildings where the locals reside. Some of the best restaurants are also located on these side roads but Gym wasn't allowed to try them.

So now what did our intrepid couple notice about the residents? The consensus was that they are well-policed. There was at least one policeman on every block and Gym heard they are there to dissuade panhandlers and street merchants. But there are no street people in Shanghai. No bagel carts or "Rolex" merchants are in evidence. Gym never saw any undesirables while in Shanghai and he was left alone by hawkers during the week he was there. The only residents that approached  him while he was there were in what must have been a camera gap because the entire city is covered by cameras, almost every square meter. Gym kicks himself when he realizes the investment opportunity that he missed just before they bought all these cameras. Someone cleaned up and he is probably living in downtown Pudong.

During our traveler's stay in China they also noticed several special units of police patrolling Pudong and the Bund which is across the river. There were groups of armed police marching about, including swat units and several men in black suits with identical bags for their fly-fishing rods and thick black briefcases. Gym believes there is one of two possible reasons for this special police presence, as follows:

1. Gym and his boss were in town and the people of the PRC wanted to make sure that a good time was had by these friendly Canadian world travelers, knowing how big this blog had become; or,
2. Chairman Xi would be there to address an International Trade Conference and they were worried about Trump's Radicals Republicans.

You pick which one you think is right. They are probably both right.

To finish our discourse on the Chinese residents that were spotted, the average office worker was young, well-dressed, polite and tech savvy. The majority of the transactions that were witnessed were closed using mobile phone apps and not credit or debit cards. Jeans were usually designer labels and were worn around the waist and not the upper thigh (no butt cracks in evidence). The point being made is that Shanghai was much closer in appearances to the utopian society that has been envisioned by many authors, like Aldus Huxley. Every city in North America fails to come close to the look of Pudong. But is this loss of freedom worth it??

The millennials working in the banks realize they a re under 24-hour surveillance and they have two points of view, which were made known to our travelers in a private conversation.. One faction of the workers believe that the constant video intrusion keeps them safe and they are therefore happy with it. The other group obviously do not like the 24/7 conformity that is required but can't do much about it. This latter guys would obviously not want to discuss their position outside, when someone is reading their lips.

In the next article we will talk about archetechture and some of the places our heros have visited.

Stay tuned!

PS. Obviously our heros have left China because Gym can access Google blogspot. The Chinese people aren't allowed it because it contains too much information that can get ithem nto too much trouble.

At time of writing, Gym and the boss are enjoying a nice beach in the Maldives which will be reported on in future post.

This is not even a Main Street and you can see the nice green boulevard

.

This is a typical boulevard on Century Avenue in downtown Pudong.
It is November now so I am sure it looks better in June.

This is an elementary class marching behind a brownoser carrying a flag.
They are on some sort of outing during school hours. All boys sport matching
blue backpacks and the girls have pink ones. 

This is looking across a huge lake at Century Park. The waterfronts are
very nicely landscaped with multiple parallel pathways for bikes and pedestrians.

An expletive of landscape art in the middle of a major intersection.

This shows how wide the sidewalks are in Pudong.

And if you have all those green strips, wide sidewalks and roads,
you get very long crosswalks.

A picture of the flowers in in Lujiazu Central Green

Rich people live here!

These are the 3 Kings of the Pudong skyline. These help give
it the futuristic feel I was talking about. I will chat more about these
in the next post.

Mrs. Gym

A bull on the Bund.

A man in Gucheng Park writing Chinese characters
on the pavement with water. 

Poinsettias!

Looking down from the upper walkway at a floral display.

Looking down from an upper walkway at a tunnel which goes under
the river and the base of the Pearl Tower which we will talk about in
the next post.

Looking across the Lujiazui Central Green at another futuristic view
of downtown Pudong

"Bladerunner" or "The last feline of Pudong"

Another pic of the Huangpu River

Ditto

Another cool floral tribute to the 70th anniversary of modern China

Vancouver Connection - otw to Shanghai

Sitting in the airport, our hero and his boss are waiting to get on the jet which will take them to China. Gym forgot to tell you something different about this trip. He will probably not be able to post a single story about China while in that country. There is no western internet in China and no blogger.com. Gym will not be able to access his google account. So, you will have to wait until he gets out of that country to hear about the adventures of our hero and his lovely companion.

For now let's review some of Gym's goals, as follows:

1. Stay out of jail;
2. Find a top notch pork dumpling and a good place for congee with century eggs;
3. See the business district all lit up at night from the Bund;
4. See the Zhujiajiao Water Town;
5.Tour Jewish Shanghai;
6. Walk through as many of the parks and Buddhist Temples as possible; and,
7. Tour the European Concession.

Check back with us in a week or so.

A trip to the Beach - Fall 2019

Our hero had his orders and in no uncertain terms was the next trip to be anything but a "beach vacation". The boss had been firm and unambiguous in this regard. So some time ago, he started looking at beaches and how to get to them.

"How about a visit to a nice beach that might soon be inundated by the rising sea levels, it may be gone soon? The ice caps are melting and we should see it before its gone." Gym blurted out one day.

"OK, get it done." the boss replied.

As management approval had been granted, Gym started to look at ways to get to the Maldives and it's beaches.

Lately in their travels to the various beaches in the Indian Ocean, Gym and his lovely wife have flown to Europe and then touched down in Dubai, before flying the final leg to their destination. This is how they got to the Seychelles and Mauritius in recent years. But because the Maldives is a bit further east, our intrepid couple wanted to consider flying west instead of east. The Maldives turns out to be exactly12 hours difference in either direction from home base, so flying west actually may be better. As it turns out, if you fly via Vancouver, you can take AC25  to Shanghai and then connect onto China Eastern, which will take you to Male, Maldives. And if you are going to get a Chinese Visa to make that Shanghai connection, why not spend a few days in Shanghai to search for the perfect pork dumpling? Ya, Gym and Mrs. Gym could soak up some orientalness and then catch that China Eastern plane to Male, to fufill the directive to get some beach time. He needed approval for the Chinese caper.

The boss likes pork dumplings and after being shown a picture of the Pudong skyline at night, she started to get excited about this add-on destination. Gym booked it! But then he started thinking he had made a mistake because of the troubles in Hong Kong and the lengthy looking Chinese Visa application. Eventually he overcame his fears and went about filling out the visa form.

China is different It is  a communist country full of crazy-rich entrepreneurs. But its the communist part that requires an onerous visa process. You have to fill out a hundred-page application and take it with you to the Chinese Visa Office to defend your responses to all the questions. Next, you need to give them a picture of yourself which has to be taken to an exacting standard.  Then you have to give ten finger prints, and hand over a lock of hair and a piece of your toenail. Following that they take a picture of you so that they can compare the picture they got you to bring with their picture and the live version of you. Once the likeness question has been concluded, they can watch from a camera above your head while you type in the code of your debit card to pay the $350 for the application. This camera is probably being viewed by some Chinese official that compiles a folder of information that includes your passport,  the various likenesses provided by the applicant and the debit card information. Pretty scary, right? Then finally, on the way out to the exit, you pay the 25 cents for each piece of paper you copied on their copier and you are free to go. Eventually, after a few days, you get a Chinese visa affixed to your Canadian passport that you can pick up in the same office.

Author's Note: Having written the above, Gym will likely need one of his fans to set up a GoFundMe page for when he gets thrown in a Chinese jail. Gym hopes that they wait to jail him after he has had a chance to eat some pork dumplings and see Shanghai a little bit. Please be generous in your support of this future cause, as paying a lawyer to lobby Trudeau will be expensive.

Our veteran travelers will leave on November 1, 2019 (tomorrow) and may send an update from the Vancouver airport before they hop on the Shanghai Express.

This is what it looks like in Calgary. The snow is already a factor. Our intrepid couple will get away from the cold stuff for a couple of weeks.

Stay tuned!