Shanghai - I'm a bit out of order

Our first glimpse of China was a huge commercial port. Out the other side of the ship, however, was the Yangtze River, with its huge traffic lanes. Ships of every kind and size going every which way all at once. Quite fun to watch, actually.

We took a shuttle from the ship to the Bund - a long promenade along a smaller river that cuts through Shanghai's downtown, with new Shanghai across the river. The Bund runs for a about a mile along the historic colonial structures - most are now corporate buildings but the Russian embassy continues in its historic building.

We wandered our way along, marveling at the new, modern Shanghai across the river, with its beautiful tower and modern skyscrapers. We were heading to the Yu Yuan gardens and bazaar and, as is usually the case, Stan's GPS took us along the back ways, in this case we walked past lots of small businesses - treadle sewing machines working on the sidewalk,  lace and button shops, bikes full of recyclable items. We spent a bit of time just dodging scooters carrying huge loads.

Eventually we found our way around the outside walks to the bazaar - wow - old Chinese architecture still overflows this small neighborhood. What was once the local covered market is now mostly for tourists. I wasn't planning to shop (or even stop at StarBucks :), but the buildings were great. We had to go into the center of the market (I think that's designed for maximum tourist flow - we passed closed doorways as we walked around the wall) to find the entrance to the gardens, which is a garden and grotto area designed in the Ming dynasty era. It's quite an interesting place, reminiscent to me of the smaller Japanese Tea Garden we had in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park when I was a child - lots of zigzag bridges over ponds full of big gold fish. It's still too early in the spring for cherry blossoms, but a few trees are starting to bloom. A few weeks from now, it will be gorgeous.

We didn't take very good advantage of our expensive visas, but after walking a fair bit, and dodging traffic on every street corner (and along the way as well), Stan's knee was tired, so after taking a few wedding shots, we headed back to the ship and tea. :).

We went upstairs for tea and as we were watching the river traffic, we realized that we were watching the river pilots being delivered to ship after ship - a non-stop process as the pilot boats go from ship to ship to drop them off. We'd learned a bit about ship pilots in a lecture earlier, so it was fun to watch the pilots climb the ladders up into those huge ships (cruise ships are easier to board since they actually have doors close to the water level). As we ate dinner, our ship backed out from its berth, made a 180 degree turn and made its way into the constant river flow, and we headed toward Hong Kong.

Shanghai is definitely a city worth spending more time exploring and since China gave us ten-year visas, maybe we'll get here again.
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