Skyscraper Day and - Finally - Xiao Long Bao!

Allen has been fascinated with the construction and presence of skyscrapers here in Shanghai and was really looking forward to exploring them. I share his enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm is tempered by a bit of acrophobia, something common in persons with an anxiety issue.

Still, I'm proud to say I persisted...we spent a day in Pudong among some of the tallest buildings in the world.

The iconic Oriental Pearl Tower, seen from almost anywhere in Shanghai, is so massive up close.

The two we "climbed." Left is Jin Mao (Golden Prosperity) Tower, 88 floors, right is Shanghai Tower, the world's second tallest at 128 floors.

Jin Mao is said to incorporate pagoda features, which I think it does!

 

The first 53 floors of Jin Mao are office space. a Grand Hyatt Hotel take floors 54 and up. We had coffee and tea in the lobby of the hotel's "first" floor.

That's the Shanghai Tower on the left, designed to look like it's inside a glass cage.

Many skyscrapers had helipads on the roof, but I was also surprised to see a Buddhist shrine atop one, and this garden near the top of another. Can you imagine?

My favorite skyscraper is the World Financial Center, on the left, that I call the "wine bag" because that's what it reminds me of. Turns out its nickname is the "bottle opener," for obviously reasons, and one can buy bottle openers in its shape. I read that the aperture at the top is to designed cooperate with wind resistance.

Love the twist of Shanghai Tower.

It's Shanghai's first LEED platinum-certified skyscraper, the highest "green" certification a building can have.

Floor 108, Shanghai Tower. I hadn't planned to go to the top with Allen, but after doing so well on the 54th floor of the Hyatt, gave it a go. Plus we got senior citizen tickets, 1/3 off regular price.

The ride up takes 55 seconds, world's fastest elevator. I confess to having been shaky during the first few minute on top, couldn't always look out the window, but got used to the height after a bit and was so thrilled to be here!

We were in one of those "small" buildings across the river (just to the left of the Pearl) the other night when we took the light show photos, just for comparison.

The Bund

The day's other wow for me was having lunch in Shanghai Tower in a wonderful, affordable place where I finally got my xiaolongbao, or long bao, "soup dumplings." They're so beautiful, so delicious, and so pleasing, texturally. We also enjoyed a"fragrant egg layer cake," very similar to a steamed bun, and Allen loved his spicy noodle soup with hand-pulled noodles.

Wikipedia:

Xiaolongbao is a type of steamed bun (baozi) from the Jiangnan region of China, especially associated with Shanghai and Wuxi. It is traditionally prepared in xiaolong, small bamboo steaming baskets,[1] which give them their name. Xiaolongbao are often referred to as a kind of "dumpling", but should not be confused with British or American-style dumplings nor with Chinese jiaozi. Similarly, they are considered a kind of "soup dumpling"[1] but should not be confused with other larger varieties of tang bao.

Shanghai-style xiaolongbao originated in Nanxiang, a suburb of Shanghai in Jiading District. The inventor of xiaolongbao sold them in his first store in Nanxiang next to the town's notable park, Guyi Garden. From there the xiaolongbao expanded into downtown Shanghai and outward. 

Steamed xiaolongbao made with partially raised flour are more commonly seen in the south. This means that their skin is tender, smoother, and somewhat translucent, rather than being white and fluffy. As is traditional for buns of various sizes in the Jiangnan region, xiaolongbao are pinched at the top prior to steaming, so the skin has a circular cascade of ripples around the crown.

Xiaolongbao are traditionally filled with pork. One popular and common variant is pork with minced crab meat and roe. More modern innovations include other meats, seafood and vegetarian fillings, as well as other possibilities. The characteristic soup-filled kind are created by wrapping solid meat aspic inside the skin alongside the meat filling. Heat from steaming then melts the gelatin-gelled aspic into soup. In modern times, refrigeration has made the process of making xiaolongbao during hot weather easier, since making gelled aspic is much more difficult at room temperature.

Traditionally, xiaolongbao is a kind of dim sum (à la carte item) or xiaochi ("snack"). The buns are served hot in the bamboo baskets in which they were steamed. Around Shanghai, "xiaolongbao" may be eaten throughout the day, although usually not for breakfast.

Clockwise from 1:00 Szechuan, luffa (loofah plant?), foie gras, black truffle, cheese, crab roe, garlic, original pork in center

When you pick one up, the aspic in the center makes the sack droop. The flavors and textures with the juice just delight your mouth!

The other new thing of the day was frozen green tea custard Japanese dessert with mochi balls. Although we caught this guy in a lonely moment, there was a line at his stand the rest of the time we were around.

Not nearly as sweet as a frozen custard, and the glutenous mochi (rice) balls were also quite bland, but now we know about this Japanese favorite!

Nighttime on The Bund and Pudong

Shanghai is famous for its nighttime shows in the heart of downtown. The Huangpu (formerly Whangpoo) River cuts through, delineating the old international section, The Bund, from the new and still-building financial center, Pudong.

To know more about The Bund...

Here's a view of Pudong taken from the 34th floor of the Vue bar in a Hyatt on The Bund side. The most iconic of Shanghai's skyscrapers, including the second highest building in the world, are located here.

And the view toward The Bund.

Traffic on the Huangpu never stops. Learned its direction, which changes during the day, is regulated but don't know if that's in accordance with tides or not.

Shanghai is famous for its nighttime lights show in these areas, and there are many bars and restaurants high up from which to see this show.  The Monument to the People's Heroes takes prominence on The Bund at night, unfortunately, as it's pretty unsightly.

Wikipedia: "The structure was built by the Shanghai municipal government in the 1993 to commemorate revolutionary martyrs, as well as those who have lost their lives fighting natural disasters.

The structure stands 24 metres (79 ft) tall, and is built in the stylised shape of three rifles leaning against each other. The Monument is surrounded by a paved space used by locals for morning exercises."

Our vantage point. Hyatt has a number of skyscraper properties here. The one we were in this evening has a mirror image twin building alongside.

Back on the ground

This Russian consular building had guards posted.

Red is the color of luck and love in China. There's a a red-lighted bridge in The Bund that's apparently an extremely popular site for bridal photos. When we walking on it, there were dozens, all dressed in red gowns, getting formal portraits taken.

More wedding photography in front of the Heroes monument

I read that Western white wedding gowns are now in vogue; we saw a few.

Good days, challenging days; we learn a lot from both

Sort of a P.S. at the beginning of this blog...

The hotel's fabulous floral displays have provided me much pleasure.

And Saturday was the day for Earth Hour, and international event occurring at 8:3o p.m. in all time zones where lights are dimmed in solidarity with environmental sanity. Here's our hotel bar. Other than this, we didn't notice any real energy savings elsewhere in the building.

Holm sent us a list of special events occurring our first weekend in Shanghai, and I chose The Sakura cherry blossom festival fairly far out of town for us to attend on Sunday. (Holm has had some issues with an on again/off again girlfriend, and was meeting her for the day, so we were on our own until evening.)

Our hotel is just a few blocks from Shanghai's main train station, where we were to catch a subway to our destination north of town.

Our subway car was jam-packed, just like what you would see in Tokyo. It reminded me of how we were crowd-bound, unable to move, during the Women's March in Boston in January. I couldn't even begin to fish my camera out of my pocket to take a photo.

Then, for reasons we couldn't fathom, everyone had to get off the train one stop before our destination, then board on the next train through. We looked at the map and decided we'd just walk it. Wrong...we wandered about a brand new and sterile neighborhood for half an hour, trying to figure out how to get across a river to the park, before we realized we were MILES from our destination. Our phone maps don't work so well in China. So back to the subway we went.

I liked this guard holding the fort at his housing development. I paused to take a photo of the massive community, and he came right out of his guard house to watch me, then waved as we walked on.

Our destination was Gucun Park, north of Shanghai, a massive man-made series of five parks intersected by canals and lakes. My guess is that there were easily 100,000 people in the park, and the neighborhoods around the park were packed with crowds going for the food and craft vendors. This was one humongous festival.

Do you see any cherry trees blooming? Neither did we.

There were a few tulips and some forlorn forsythia, but that was about it for blooms.

What we did see was quite the police and military presence. As soon as we exited the metro station we saw paddy wagons, and a couple of guys being stuffed into one. Police were carrying automatic weapons (I think, don't know guns), so did not dare to take a photo.

Military also present.

First thing in the park was Dinosaur Land, no joke, complete with animatronics and sound. Weird.

We had to walk by the absolutely most awful smelling thing I've ever smelled that's meant as food. Learned from Holm's friend that it's stinky tofu, and is considered festive, a la fried dough at the fair. There is no way I could ever get past the smell of pig and chicken manure mixed together, as Allen said...and he knows manure.

We were pretty miserable. The walk from metro to park gate was a couple of kilometers, and the walk to the exit at the end of the park was three or four more (we've been walking a LOT every day on this trip and one of my knees is giving me an age warning, so don't think I'm a weenie). There was absolutely no shortcut. Then in vain we tried to hail a cab and ended up having to walk all the way back to the metro station so we could enjoy another jam-packed ride back into town. The hotel never looked so good.

We were meeting Holm and his friend and colleague, Marianna, that evening for dinner at a place near his home, so we hopped into a cab after making sure our doorman gave good instructions to the driver.

No taxi driver speaks English. A friend who's been to China gave us good advice - always carry the hotel's card to show your driver so at least you'll get home! Our hotel's cards are excellent. Not only do they get us home, but also list lots of popular local destinations we can check off ourselves to "tell" our driver where we want to go. Or, the doorman can just tell our driver where to take us, does it for hotel guests all the time.

But, and these things happen, our doorman looked up our restaurant destination and gave our driver the wrong address. What could we do but exit the taxi? We contacted Holm, who gave us the right address, but we really couldn't figure out how to get there on our own. Nice neighborhood and all, but it wasn't where we wanted to be. Allen went into a little restaurant to see if anyone spoke English, and the gentleman and his ten-year-old daughter came to the rescue. His English wasn't much, but his daughter, he proudly told us, had studied English in school for four years! Sure enough, she was able to translate back and forth for us.

He eventually led us into a real estate office and made the guys there print out a neighborhood map for us, then carefully drew arrows on it to show to our destination. Then he also explained it again on the wall map you see. Handshakes all around, and we had no trouble finding our way.

Holm's got a wonderful Yunnan cuisine restaurant in his neighborhood run by a British ex-pat.

Holm's friend, Marianna, is gorgeous, six feet tall, from Ukraine but has lived all over the world, likes to change countries every two years or so. Just a fun and fascinating woman. She and Holm were in the same training group for Education First, their employer.

Food was just so good. Here's spicy squid hotpot.

Empty bowls and wonderful cabbage dumplings tell the end of a delicious story.

Monday morning brought us back to the train station to find a bus to the airport. I really wanted to ride Shanghai's MagLev train, which runs only between the airport and a station on the south side of town.

Allen doesn't like guided tours and is cheap, and I love to just look out the window at what goes past in a new place, so taking the bus was a no-brainer. Bus was comfy, and windows were large - all good.

I cannot get over the massiveness of high-rise apartment complexes that go on, literally, for miles. Here's a taste of what we saw on the way to Pudong Airport.

Yeah, this "art."

For a time we ran right along the MagLev track.

It tilts on curves! The train actually doesn't touch the track, per Allen, but "floats" on a magnetic field. From Wikipedia: Maglev (derived from magnetic levitation) is a transport method that uses magnetic levitation to move vehicles without making contact with the ground. With maglev, a vehicle travels along a guideway using magnets to create both lift and propulsion, thereby reducing friction by a great extent and allowing very high speeds. In itself, maglev technology includes no moving parts.

Maglev trains move more smoothly and more quietly than wheeled mass transit systems. The power needed for levitation is typically not a large percentage of its overall energy consumption;^[1]most goes to overcome drag, as with other high-speed transport. Maglev trains hold the speed record for trains.

Compared to conventional trains, differences in construction affect the economics of maglev trains, making them much more efficient. For high-speed trains with wheels, wear and tear from friction from wheels on rails accelerates equipment wear and prevents high speeds.^[2] Conversely, maglev systems have been much more expensive to construct, offsetting lower maintenance costs.

Despite decades of research and development, maglev transport systems are in operation in just three countries (Japan, Korea and China).

I know it's an awful photo, but wanted to remember that we got to see one train zip by us.

At the airport, lunch. Allen's bullfrog soup was maybe his favorite meal of the trip so far.

Allen says the frog was sweeter than chicken, more delicate, with less "resistance," softer than chicken, really liked it as a meat.

I loved the beauty of the dish. There were several varieties of sweet peppers, the ubiquitous eggplant Holm's told us about, all in a peppery broth with lots of oil.

Neither of us had seen raw peppercorns before.

Then onto the MagLev, for an eight-minute ride that cost $7. It was so smooth!

I'm putting this video here because I can, and not because it's of interest to anyone else. Indeed, skip it.

A view on the way in to town...

I'd hate to be the person scrubbing...

Random memory...this total knock-off of Ikea chain here, down to the merchandise, food, colors, and row of flags flying outside. I guess there's no international way of preventing this?