So, perhaps the best thing to do is to quote comments from some of our members:
…Fab TR mate, look forward to more. Love the detailed and often humourous illustrations of your trip...
…Great TR, really enjoying it. Have flown Shanghai-Beijing before but now I must try the train...
…Just want to add my note of appreciation for your TR also mate - love seeing the observations and how you describe them...
...I love the pics of the Great Wall covered in light snow; quite a contrast to autumn when we were there. Looks cold tho...
...Love the report - very timely
...Great TR, looking forward to reading your thoughts on Harbin...
…Great TR, really enjoying it. Have flown Shanghai-Beijing before but now I must try the train...
…Just want to add my note of appreciation for your TR also mate - love seeing the observations and how you describe them...
...I love the pics of the Great Wall covered in light snow; quite a contrast to autumn when we were there. Looks cold tho...
...Love the report - very timely
...Great TR, looking forward to reading your thoughts on Harbin...
My thoughts on Shanghai.
A mixture of the old and the new, a loss of culture, the lure of the dollar. Shanghai is the capitalist center of communist China and everyone is out to make a buck. If I had to describe Pudong, I would liken it to Sydney, then the other side of the river to Melbourne, never the two should mix, however they have, and the alloy that has formed is not something to be proud of.
The design of Pudong could be the workings of a lunatic who has been subjected to 52 weeks of Buck Rogers re-runs then forced to design and build a city using flashing lights and neon, building bricks of odd shapes, spheres, flying saucers, glass, chrome and of course endless funds to make the biggest and tallest of everything to prove his bamboo phallus is larger than everyone else’s.
Shanghai is a dream, it’s a dream boarding on a nightmare that has a magnetic attraction that makes me want to come back time and time again for reasons I can’t fathom. It’s not the people, its not the sights and smells, it’s not the westernized China. It could be the food, if fact, it could be some of the people, I’m not sure, but whatever it is, Shanghai will draw me back again to keep trying to discover the secret of the city.
A statement that rings true is “once you leave Shanghai, you enter China”.
A mixture of the old and the new, a loss of culture, the lure of the dollar. Shanghai is the capitalist center of communist China and everyone is out to make a buck. If I had to describe Pudong, I would liken it to Sydney, then the other side of the river to Melbourne, never the two should mix, however they have, and the alloy that has formed is not something to be proud of.
The design of Pudong could be the workings of a lunatic who has been subjected to 52 weeks of Buck Rogers re-runs then forced to design and build a city using flashing lights and neon, building bricks of odd shapes, spheres, flying saucers, glass, chrome and of course endless funds to make the biggest and tallest of everything to prove his bamboo phallus is larger than everyone else’s.
Shanghai is a dream, it’s a dream boarding on a nightmare that has a magnetic attraction that makes me want to come back time and time again for reasons I can’t fathom. It’s not the people, its not the sights and smells, it’s not the westernized China. It could be the food, if fact, it could be some of the people, I’m not sure, but whatever it is, Shanghai will draw me back again to keep trying to discover the secret of the city.
A statement that rings true is “once you leave Shanghai, you enter China”.
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