Every morning I wake up to see Shanghai.

Every morning I wake up to see Shanghai. Here is the view. A monoprint I made in 2010.

Here is how I captioned the piece: 

The city is cut in two by the Huangpu River. 

Shanghai is my entry into China. Tall towers, architectural flights of fancy dwarf side-streets.   

I discover one street close to the hotel is crammed full of artist material shops.

Originally posted on September 10, 2005, 

 

Left Hang Zhou on Friday evening for the weekend in Shanghai. 

Explored the side streets on Saturday morning for art stores and returned later that day and the next (!) to buy exquisite brushes and paper and Chinese ink at low (low) prices before I left Shanghai.  

We were later scooped up by local colleague’s and people-carrier-ed over to the Shanghai Museum. The building itself is an architectural masterpiece – inside and out, surrounded by lots of other great buildings, planning controls for new buildings obviously take little account of what is there already so the result is a real casserole of different styles of modernity(!) Inside we toured the sculpture, furniture, jade and bronze collections and saw some fabulous works of art dating back 6000 years and came away in awe.

 

Off to the old Bazaar, which was full of new things. These included Starbucks, MacDonald’s Haagen-Dazs and KFC. But the buildings were very authentic and many more are being restored. 

It was time for a late lunch in Lo Bo Lang Restaurant a famous restaurant, famous for its food and the famous people who have eaten there before us; including Clinton, The Queen, Peter Mandelson (oops) they all have their pictures on the wall as you enter the main dinning room.

 

The rest of the team were out on separate social events. I was pleased visit the hotel’s Italian restaurant. On the way through the lobby I was hailed  by an attractive girl in a short evening dress. 

“Massage?”  

“No thanks” I said and strode forward purposefully towards my meal. 

 

Leaving afterwards the same lady: “Room number?”

I smiled dolefully and scurried down the escalator towards the lifts and safety.

 

 Sunday, more escorted activity, shopping. First stop was the Fabric Market where Tracy had to collect the coats and dresses she had ordered and been measured for a week earlier and then on to The Fake Market. Well, not actually, we were taken to The House, a place where you enter a ground floor private room shelved out with ‘wares’ mainly handbags and other leather goods. 

One of the shop keepers wanders in with aluminium attaché cases each of watches. Purchases were made by the assembled tour group.

 

Little more to do. Back to the hotel, more email and packing (mainly quarts into pint pots) and preparing for the journey back. 

No female stalkers on Sunday evenings. After a light supper colleague Tracy and I went up to the 50th floor of the Bund Centre where they play jazz every night. We stayed for an hour looking listening to some mellow music ....

and looking out across the river at night and a hundred thousand coloured lights across the city. A far away land, full of wonderful people. Just in Shanghai and neighbouring city Hang Zhou I know enough to know that I want to come again.

 

Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times

(Chinese proverb)