Shanghai

A couple of hours on the fast train from Qufu took us to Shanghai, the epitome of a modern, bustling Asian city.
Our hostel was remarkedly good - a brand new, clean room with the best shower we've had in a long time; a cute rooftop bar/restaurant; really friendly staff (who even went with Alistair to the local Mandarin-speaking barbers to enable him to get a much needed haircut) and all within a short walk of People's Square, the centre of the city.
We did rapidly find out that our desire to maintain our early morning routine was going to be a challenge as nothing seemed to open before about 9am; the daytime was pretty hot and there was lots to do in the evenings, as the city really seemed to start buzzing under the lights. However, a slightly more relaxed schedule did allow us to recover from the strains of the previous two weeks and a cold which had been annoyingly persistent.
Hightlights of our few days included:
The day of the dumpling
Fried, steamed or with soup in them; in any shape or size Shanghai is the place to get dumplings - and we didn't hold back - on our first day we had 4 varieties!
At lunch time there were hundreds of tourists crowding the restaurants around the gardens. We walked a little further and stumbled upon a food court, where we were the only westerners. Here we enjoyed dumplings where you sip out the soup inside through a straw and fried crab dumplings, both delicious local specialties:

This was followed by more dumplings for dinner - this time the cloud-like ones, at Din Tai Fung, a well known Taiwanese chain with branches in all the major Chinese cities.
We also enjoyed some delicious Japanese food and found a great cafe in Tiangzifang for breakfast, with probably the biggest coffee mugs in the world:

The skyline at night

An evening trip to the Bund, one of the most prestigious streets in Shanghai, gave us glorious views of both the old buildings that line the street...

and the modern towering skyscrapers of Pudong, just across the river:

We also had the opportunity to experiment with some night-time traffic pics...more work needed:

 

Evening entertainment
Shanghai has it all - but we opted for a trip to the circus, to see some amazing athletes do death defying stunts (not quite as good as the Cirque de Soleil we'd seen a few years ago in Japan, but half the price and still pretty amazing); a cocktail at a fabulous bar high up over the city, with a great view of Pudong and the Bund; and an evening of jazz in a really retro 1960s hotel bar, played by a band who looked like they'd played exactly the same set every night for the last 60 years:

The markets and gardens:
A good few hours were spent meandering the streets of the various markets and antique shops in Shanghai - again selling anything and everything you could imagine - watch anyone?

And Yuyuan Gardens was a delightful little haven from the hustle and bustle of the city, with a great selection of tea houses, pagodas and other old buildings:

The train

To top it all off, we were magnetically levitated to the airport in a matter of seconds by one of the fastest trains in the world:

Yes you read that correctly!

 

Shanghai may not have had the 'big sights' of Beijing, but we enjoyed our few days here a lot more, and has made a strong claim for a place in our top 3 cities of the trip.