A short layover in Shanghai

When I was complaining about the high cost of flight tickets from Cebu back to Turkey, Alex, a young student from Qingdao (he’s now studying in PEI), asked me if I had looked at China Eastern Airlines. He was thinking of visiting a friend in İstanbul and said their prices seemed reasonable. Indeed it was about half the price of other tickets, and they even let you pay for the bicycles at the same time. Why hadn’t that come up in my searches? Check-in at the airport in Cebu went very smoothly, and our luggage went straight through to İstanbul.

China gives 24-hour visas on arrival so an 18-hour layover sounded fun. We arrived in Shanghai at about 7am after the short red-eye flight. The only place we could find to get money at the Shanghai airport was an overpriced ATM (flat 35 cny fee). We brought lots of warm clothes with us but left a heavy carry-on at the left luggage at the airport. Next was a cheap (18 cny/person) 24-hour metro pass — not available from the machines, but the guard at the turnstyles sold them and spoke enough English to make it easy for us. Woohoo, we’re on our way to Shanghai!

We got off the metro at the Yuyuan Garden station and were greeted with this gate:

Around the corner we enjoyed the first of many snacks of the day.

This area felt new, sanitized, and commercialized. Maybe it’s obvious from the photos.

We spent over an hour exploring the nearby Yuyuan Garden, a recommended (according to my internet research) site for those with a short time in Shanghai. It used to be a private home.

Then it was time for more food, of course.

Also in this neighborhood is the Taoist Shanghai City God Temple which has an entrance fee. Here are a couple photos:

I knew Shanghai, along with many cities in China, has torn down a lot of historic neighborhoods, but on the air photos I noticed a dense area of narrow lanes south of the Yuyuan Garden area. Maybe we could still see some old neighborhoods? We crossed a massive road

and came to street after street that looked like this:

Here’s the outer wall of a temple that was closed (for good?) when we were there:

I was a little discouraged after the somewhat soulless initial commercial area and then forcibly closed (with concrete blocks) residential area. We made the decision then to take the metro west out of the center of Shanghai to Qibao, the most easily accessible of Shanghai’s water towns for people with very limited time like us. On the way to the metro we passed the Fazangjian Buddhist Temple which actually was open.

Qibao was a fun place to spend the rest of the afternoon.

The main drag here was full of tourist junk to buy, but then it morphed into all food which we enjoyed. We ate tofu, a dumpling, a bowl of noodle soup, and a skewer of crickets. The crickets were deep fried with chili pepper. Tasty.

The thing to do after dark in Shanghai is, of course, to see the city lights from The Bund. It was dark by the time we got off the metro there.

It had seen many photos, but I didn’t realize it was a 360° view.

We weren’t really hungry after grazing all day, but we wanted to eat once more before leaving Shanghai. It felt like the first time we sat down for a real meal.

After sleeping very little on the short flight the night before and then touring the city all day, we were absolutely wiped out. We got on the airport-bound (?) metro and fell asleep. The seats faced the side, rather than the forward or backward. In a daze I woke up, and the train was stopped and empty. However, I looked down and saw we weren’t the only passengers. I checked the time and knew we couldn’t possibly be at the airport so quickly. I was still half asleep. The train started moving, but something seemed wrong. It took me a couple stops to realize we were moving in the wrong direction. We got off immediately, crossed the platform, and waited for the train heading in the opposite direction.

Once we were awake enough to think straight, we figured out what happened. The first train was indeed going in the direction of the airport but not all the way. Everyone who needed to continue in that direction needed to get off at that last long stop and wait for the next train. We didn’t get off and instead started heading back in the direction we had come from! When we were on the correct train again, we knew we wouldn’t miss our flight, but we were cutting it close for the left luggage counter which closed at midnight. Thankfully we made it in time and avoided any unexpected adventures on our quick visit to China.

I visited China for a couple months in 1994, but after this fun day in Shanghai (30 years later!), Ferda and I are thinking we shouldn’t wait quite so long for our next trip to China.