China! Day 4

Day 4

We're up with the sun again at 6am. The train arrives in rainy Shanghai at 7:30am and we get a cab to the hotel. The concierge brings out our stored luggage and heads for the front door. Jim stops him: "Actually, we're checking back in. It's kind of unusual." At this point, there hasn't been a shower, change of clothes, or a real meal in 48 hours. Before we even go to our room, we each eat about 3 servings of breakfast. Hands down, we're the most disgusting people in the hotel. By 9:30am, I am stuffed and crawling into a comfy bed. Jim is going to the gym (crazy, I know). The nap feels great, but it does nothing to regulate my sleeping patterns. We leave the hotel and officially start the day around noonish.

We visited the Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar, which looks like "traditional" China with pagado buildings, but I've read that it's more like a Disneyland version of China. Then we discovered an interesting place near the hotel, known only as 580 Nanjing Road. You wouldn't know what it is from the outside, but you're in a different world when you step inside. It has floor after floor and aisle after aisle of tiny shops selling knock-off goods. Think about the stands that sell fakes in NYC and then multiply this by about 1000. None of the "stores" have names - they're known only as 122/6F or 139/B2. It's like a maze. The stores all seem teeny-tiny, but then someone opens up a secret crawl space or leads you through a passagway of halls and halls of even more fake stuff. All negotiating is done by calculator. The salespeople grab your arm, block your way, chase you... anything to make a sale. I'm addressed only as "pretty girl want a bag?" and Jim is apparently a man in desperate need of a Rolex. The shoppers look completely worn out.

We then attempted to go out, but our timing/clocks are still off, and we're way too early to be "out" on a Saturday night. We went to Tongren Rd, another area in Shanghai known for nightlife. It was pretty empty and a lot of places weren't open yet. A woman assured us a particular bar was open and led us up an elevator. We were the only 2 people there, and the preponderance of poles suggested it may have been a house of ill repute. Jim wouldn't let us stay long enough to officially confirm this suspicion. We went to one other place on Tongren Rd and then went back to the Xintiandi area, which was much easier to find the second time around!