Shanghai: Yuyuan Garden and Xin Tian Di

On the last day of our Shanghai trip, the rain cleared a little. I gave my last lecture in the morning and then Thomas and I were free. A student, Alex [Chinese name unknown], came to pick us up and take us to Yuyuan Garden, a formerly private garden owned by a businessman during the the Qing Dynasty.

On the way there we passed through these streets of an "old" town. Actually they are all recently built. Shanghai has very little old architecture - in fact, most of China has very little except for the temples. Partly this is because so much was built of wood.

It was fun to stroll the streets which were crowded and had a festive atmosphere. Below you see the story of modern China. By the way, the Colonel rules in China. KFC is by far the most popular fast-food. It's better than in the US and the meals are all Chinese adapted, with a lot of spicy coating. [Sorry, somehow I deleted the KFC in Old Town picture. We'll put it into another post.]

The area is one of the major tourist spots in Shanghai - which is a massive city - because there is very little green space in the whole city. Plus there are a lot of foreigners here every day as it is one of the major cities in the world right now. But I am glad we didn't end up here. Way too big and crowded.

Here is Thomas next to the largest pair of scissors we had ever seen. We were thinking of Helen, who has always been to scissors, for better or for worse.

Above you see a shot of the garden park and entrance. It was a typical Chinese garden, so there was no big green space but instead it was filled with a maze of little areas, each tucked around some corner or walkway. Our student said that it was very much based on the book "I Ching" or, the Book of Changes, and ancient and cryptic work.

There were a lot of cemented together stones, called "rockery", as in "be careful on the rockery" or "this way to the rockery". Thomas enjoyed running around and climbing on the stones. After being in the hotel for a few days, and being out only in the rain previously, it was nice to get out and move around.

Here is a shot of our student guide, Alex. He was an interesting guide as he was a little older than the typical graduate student. First he went into the military, then he went to undergraduate. After his BA he worked as a journalist around Hangzhou [a famously beautiful city close to Shanghai in Zhejiang Province]. Now he was in the Masters Program studying applied ethics.

We thought that this big dragon head was rather dramatic. Below is the stage for the family's private performances of music or opera.It was very well done and the detail work was very sharp. Because the garden gets so much tourist traffic they could obviously spend a good deal of money on repairs.

After we left Yuyuan Garden we went to a nearby neighborhood called Xin Tian Di. The buildings in it were formerly housing for poor people, but the area had been massively gentrified and now it was one of the trendy spots for foreign ex-pats and young Shanghai professionals.

The contrast with modern Shanghai doesn't look too bad here.

Below is the building in which the communist party began, back in the day. One of the inner rooms held the first meeting where Mao and Zhou Enlai, etc., all did their thing. I wouldn't have noticed but the poster behind the tree has a picture of Zhou Enlai in a business suit and I thought that it was an advertisement cropping his image for some recent product - which would have been shocking. But no, just a picture of him back in the day in a Shanghai suit.

We ended with a stop in a pub. We actually hadn't eaten much all day and it was about 4 or 5 already. So Thomas got a burger and fries in a nice German themed beer pub with a lot of dark wood and brass.

On the whole, it was a busy but good trip. I promise not to blog about Shanghai anymore!