How to do Shanghai in five days
The pictures are at http://www.pbase.com/wwll/2007sha
First, have your expat friend put you up in his 2000-square feet, US$6000 per month apartment, complete with internet access and 60-inch cable TV.
Have his maid do your laundry, buy breakfast from the local food stalls and wash your dishes.
Have your friend pick you up at the airport with his driver, lend you a cell phone and then put his car and driver at your disposal while he worked.
Have your friend suggest places to go and places to eat. Better yet, have him go with you.
I just did five days in Shanghai. While I was born there, I left when I was four months old. I have stayed in Paris or Moscow more than Shanghai so I do not boast any local insight. But reading and speaking Chinese helps.
The first night we went for a midnight stroll on the Bund. The facade of the Bund remains the same as in the 1930's but for more lights, but across the river in Pudong there are some of the tallest buildings in Asia.
The highlight of my sightseeing was the show "From Titian to Goya: Masterpieces from the Prado" at the Shanghai Museum of Art. This was a miniature of the Prado itself, and besides Spanish paintings, there were Italian, Flemish and French paintings. There wer three Goyas, four El Grecos, five Velaquezs and one Rubens. The Goyas included one small 'black painting.' These are not cream of the crop but a nice show none the less.
We spent one day shopping at a block-size, five stories mall. We only shopped in about 25% of the stalls.
We went to the season opener of the Shanghai Sinfonietta at the Oriental Arts Center. I bought the cheapest (RMB80) seats and before the concert started was directed to the most expensive seats (RMB 580). The music director conducted Beethoven’s piano concerto no. 1 from the keyboard and the orchestra was at a loss. As I reported in 2004, the concert hall is nice. Now they have a moving announcement strip telling people not to clap between movements.
For our departure we took the magnetic levitation train. I have a photograph of the speed gauge at 430 km/hour.
The rest of this writeup is about food.
US$1 lunch and other meals
While shopping we went outside the mall for lunch. At this very local place one orders at the entrance. A lady sits at the cash register just outside and takes your money and gives a receipt. Then you go inside and fight for a place to sit down. You give the receipt to one of the servers and among the chaos she remembers what you paid for. On the other side of the entrance they make their specialty: duck gizzards and duck blood vermacelli soup. Servers in gloves grab ingredients from buckets and put them in huge bowls, yell for the runners when the bowls are ready. The soup is amazingly delicious. I had fried dumplings and a thin pork chop fried in egg batter. Both were very nice. The cost of this lunch for two was US$2.
For our last meal in Shanghai we went to the Xia Restaurant (9 ZhenNing Road, 6212 6797). The character for Xia can meaning summer or is the name of a Neolithic dynasty in China, I cannot decide which. We had four tiny appetizer plates: drunk chicken, a very well seasoned bean curd, thousand-year old eggs and ultra-thin shavings of cucumbers made into rolls. We had their signature dish: crab lumps, crab meat and tiny shrimp on a bed of spinach spaghetti. We also had fried rice old Shanghai style which we couldn't figure out the ingredients. The bill was RMB 340 or US$45.
We had the most Shanghai meal at Bao Luo (Paul's Kitchen, http://www.baoluojiulou.com). We had drunk chicken, cucumber skins, chicken feet, seafood egg rolls, crab slivers stir fried with sweet rice dumplings, shrimp, Swiss steak, hot and sour soup, and 'raw sauteed buns.' A big feast.
Perhaps to the chargin of purists, we had several Cantonese meals in Shanghai. We had dim sum at Fu Lin Xuan in the Hong Kong New Asia Tower (6372 1777), dinner at Crystal Jade Restaurant (1038 West Nanjing Road, Room 719, 5228 1133), and late snack at Sun Wong Restaurant.