Bear's Blog New Zealand (Beta)

[China Tour]Photos & comments: Shanghai[1]

 You all should seen picture like this some time before, Shanghai's CBD. The tower is called Oriental Pearl, and if you look the picture closely you could there are two ''globals', that's conference centre.

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[China Tour] First time home.

First I have to say a big thank you for people who dedicated themselves to keep the Internet free to citizens in some parts of the world, without that, I cannot even visit this blog in China.

Thank you, Torpark!

That's the reason I cannot update this blog in last few days.

As you may know I was in Shanghai for last week. I've never been to that city before so it’s the first time for me.

My first impression of my 'motherland' is neither high rise buildings nor the overall size of this city, but ... let's say a feeling while I was clearing the custom.

 I said hello and handed my passport to the official, then strange thing happened. That guy, let's say that guy, used a very indescribable way, a very strange way to just looking at my face. That process continued for about a minute and he just keep looking at my face and that really makes me feel bad.

I thought the photo on that passport didn't take long time ago and I should look similar as the passport shown, but because his strange behaviour I didn't say a word, neither did he.

And for god's sake he finally handed my passport to me, and still not a word.

Shanghai is generally a very modern city. The thing I desire about this city the most is its very convenient public transport. The tube or the underground railway can take to me anywhere in this city and I don't have to walk more than 30 minutes, and it is terribly faster than any other ways of transport, though the Line 1-3 may get overcrowded in peak hours.

You don't have to bring any cash to use Shanghai's public transport. The city has a 'public transportation card', which is bit like a prepay card, once you added money into that card you can use them to ride any of city's public transport, from taxi to bus, and so the tube.

I think Auckland City should really consider about building the underground railway.

Another thing worth to mention is Shanghai's house price. In Auckland we are paying more and more to get your castle. And the situation is even worse in Shanghai: 6000 - 7000 Yuan per square metre (approx NZ$1200 per square) metre can only insure yourself an apartment more than 40 km away from the city centre.

How about in the city? My friend told me that one of her classmate's grandparents just sold their old, poorly maintained apartment in the City, which was about 50,000 Yuan per square metre(approx NZ$10,000 per square metre), if my memory serves my right, but its close to that.

For your information, an ordinary middle class in Shanghai earns about 6,000 – 10,000 Yuan per month. How about poor people?

And remember all houses I was talking about are apartments.

Shanghai is a commercial city so there are not many attractions you can look at. Shanghai got a tower which is similar to some said 'nasty tower' in Auckland. It is called Dong Fang Ming Zhu or oriental pearl. It's bit higher than the Sky Tower but once you get on that you could feel totally different. It's green you see on the Sky Tower, but on that oriental pearl, everywhere I was looking was grey, high rise buildings, smokes, just the grey colour.

Other attractions? I don't think you people will have interest on that, I also visited the tomb of first Chinese Christian in mainland China, the place where the Communist party of China was born.

Because the way I am accessing this blog the connection is very very slow, I'll try to upload some of the photos in Shanghai in another blog post, and more comments there. Keep watching.