Shanghai'd in Shanghai

Growing up my mother taught me to never trust two things: 1. Anything that bleeds for three days and doesn't die and 2. Shanghai Taxi drivers. Okay I lied about both of those, but the point is, Shanghai Taxi drivers are criminals operating a common business as a facade to trap unknowing foreigners and rob them blind. Okay, they probably aren't all that bad, maybe we just weren't lucky, OR, maybe our cab driver was actually trapped in the trunk and replaced by his attacker, a known sociopath who has been eluding Shanghai authorities and harassing the honest people for years. Whatever the case,  as you will see, we got screwed.

Our trip to Shanghai was three days long, starting with a flight on Friday night, and ending with a flight out Monday. We had decided, since Shanghai's Pudong airport was on the far eastern part of the city, fairly well removed from our hostel on the far western side of the city, to split a hotel room for one night and then take off from there. We picked a fairly cheap hotel within 5 minutes of the airport, and only a short ride away from a metro stop, where we would begin seeing Shanghai in earnest the following day. But how to get there...

SO, we get one of the regulated airport cabs (I'm still working out if they were co-conspirators or not, at the very least, they are complicit) and explain to him our destination. He understands and takes off. As we are leaving the airport, we realize he hasn't started his meter, a big no-no for Chinese taxi drivers (we found out later we could have called and reported him, or at least threatened to, for not starting it right away). I used my perfect broken Chinese to say, "Can. Use. This." while pointing to the meter (My Chinese was better than that, but you get the point). He ignores me and then my good buddy Paul, asks the requisite follow-up question, "How much is this gonna cost?" 100 RMB the man says. A cab in China usually costs 7.50 RMB to start, and then 1 additional RMB for every kilometer of 5 kilometers. So our five minute ride would have at most cost us 20 RMB. Paul lost his f'ing mind.

Paul's Chinese is much better than mine, a fact I attribute to his having been born in China, and having lived there for 8 years before emigrating to the States, and subsequently forgetting everything he ever knew about Chinese. Nonetheless, he picks it up faster than I do, and, when he has time, can learn 50 new words and characters a day, something I could never do. Paul began assaulting the driver with question after question, asking him why it was so much, explaining how close it was, and requesting (repeatedly) that he let us out. The guy shouted back, and they argued back and forth. Paul fought valiantly, but we arrived and nothing had been settled, and the price had only been reduced to 60RMB, about three times what it should cost. Exhausted from a long day of classes and travelling, and seeing no plausible avenue of escape except refusing to pay (and who knows what that SOB would've done then), we gave the bastard his dirty money and walked to the hotel defeated, having gained nothing but a life lesson and a clever title for a blog (Eyooooo).

I still taunt Paul by asking him for 60 RMB sometimes, he still doesn't think it's funny. Anyways, our trip was all downhill from there. Shanghai is an amazing city, and one dirty, thieving, cheating, (et cetera, ad infinitum) cabby wasn't going to ruin our impression (only Paul's). We started our first day with a dumpling breakfast. Then, Paul found a man (not an official cabby, which is usually sketchy) who agreed to take us to the subway station for 15RMB. Since unofficial drivers are usually more expensive anyway, we hopped in. Upon arriving, the man asked us for 45RMB. Apparently it was 15RMB per person. As you can imagine, Paul almost had a aneurysm. I calmed him down and told him we didn't have much choice since we didn't ask, and that it really was a little over 2.50USD per person anyway. We paid the man. Paul is still angry. I still taunt him by using the Chinese word for "altogether" as much as possible when discussing money.

Once we finally made it to the subway we headed into downtown Shanghai. It's a huge city, and divided down the middle by a big, dirty river. On the eastern portion are the skyscrapers, some famous, some still under construction. But the scene when you step out from the metro is pretty cool:

Our first stop was the Pearl of The Orient tower:

You pay a pretty handsome fee to go to the top and to see the museum in the basement. The trend of me enjoying museums and my companions patiently waiting for me to enjoy museums started here:

View from the top, the one skyscraper is still under construction, but already dwarfs every other building in Shanghai:

Sorry mom, but I once again trusted a Chinese glass walkway, this time from even further up:

Since Paul and I had enjoyed the ferry in Hong Kong so much we decided to take the one in Shanghai to cross the river (there isn't much to do on the East side). Bad choice. The one in Shanghai is hard to find, crowded, and not much of a ride. It took us about half an hour to find it. If you ever go, just take the subway. We did stop to take some pictures with the Bund (the strip of European style buildings along the water) in the background though:

Once we made it across we walked the Bund and took in the architecture. You know what they say, when in Rome...[insert cliche here]...sometimes you have to grab the bull by the horns:

ha-HA!

*eh-hem* Where was I? Ah yes, some of the exquisitely juxtaposed European styling of the Bund:

From there we hit the famous shopping street of Nanjing Lu. It had every designer store you could think of and then some. Even the locally owned places catered to the wealthy. The people were many, the prices were high, so we breezed through it fairly quickly and headed back to the hostel for the night.

The next day, we went to my favorite stop of the whole trip, the Shanghai Propaganda Museum. Oh man. My inner Political Science and History nerd was out in force. It's a private museum in the basement of an apartment building, but it has the best collection of Cultural Revolution era posters and memorabilia. I could have stayed there all day. And, the kicker: They had a gift shop where they sold authentic Cultural Revolution artifacts. I don't know if you think that's as cool as I do (my companions surely didn't) and I don't care. It was the coolest thing I've ever spent money on, and boy did I spend. No regrets. Sorry, no pictures allowed.

(For those interested: http://www.shanghaipropagandaart.com/ )

From there, we toured the French concession, an upper class era where the French used to hang. It's a nice change of pace from downtown Shanghai, as it's quiet, and a bit more spread out. We walked all the way down the main street, mostly due to Paul's sudden aversion to anything that even looked like a taxi, but also because the area itself is just plain nice. Nothing stood out as particularly photo-worthy, but you just felt comfortable there. I liked it. Way to go France:

We then headed to an area called Old Town. Our guidebook said there were tons of awesome small shops and souvenir stops, and to look out for pickpockets. I don't know if the guidebook was yanking our collective chain or if Shanghai had changed entirely since the thing was written, but we ended up in a very dodgy end of Shanghai (at least the pickpocket warning was useful). We could have just taken a cab to get out but....Sorry Paul. We finally managed to make it the Bazaar, another well known tourist spot. It had the usual overpriced crap, and then some, but among the suspiciously similar goods and exceedingly high prices were a few good finds:

As night rolled in we headed back to the Bund to take in Pudong (the West side of Shanghai) at night. It didn't disappoint: 

With one day left, and much of the city covered, we slept in a bit, and then headed towards the Shanghai History Museum, or the Chinese Smithsonian, as I like to think of it. The area it was in was gorgeous:

And the building itself was no slouch either:

Inside were four floors of exhibits highlighting every aspect of Chinese history. I was like a kid in a candy shop. I soaked it all in for about two and a half hours. Paul and Victoria enjoyed it as much as they could and then patiently waited for me (thank you!). Some of my favorites:

1000 Buddha Stone:

Get it Girl:

After I had exhausted the museum we headed back to the Bazaar for some last minute shopping and rest before heading back to the airport. We stopped by the Tower one last time on our way out:

All in all Shanghai was my favorite Chinese city thus far. Probably because I'm such a history dork, but still, it had a lot to commend it. If the French Concession wasn't so expensive I'd think about retiring there, and the general atmosphere was good all around...

Except for those damn Cabbies. 

Oh, and the hostel had bed bugs. (shout out to Old man Bryan for the recommendation)