I'm loving it

It's 24 hours since I landed in Shanghai - here's what I've been up to.

Landing at Pudong airport was quite bizarre - it's surrounded by fields and then a wall of smog, it was eerie not knowing where the city was, if it was just behind the grey haze 50 metres away. I got picked up by one of the Shanghai Daily reporters, Wing Tan, and we drove the hour into the city. Yes, turns out Pudong airport is way in the wops.

On the ride in I saw in the flesh many of the landmarks I'd only seen in pictures - the Oriental Pearl tower, the "bottle opener" financial centre (more below), the red upside-down pyramid of China's expo building. The city's absolutely huge, with towering apartment and office blocks from horizon to horizon, but I think most is commuter suburbia, with the CBD proper being smaller, but still massive.

After landing at my hostel, I went for a jet lag wander in search for food, and I'm afraid, reader, I succumbed completely to stereotype.

So I can report a Big Mac tastes just as delicious to the weary traveller in Shanghai as it does anywhere on earth.

Never fear, breakfast next day was back on track:

Yummy dumplings and fried bread things with pickled vegetable (I assume) slivers at my hostel. You'll notice a knife and fork however, I'm still semi wimping out.

As I was up before dawn (jet lag) I decided to head off to the centre of town early to walk around. My hostel is in Putuo, which is just outside the CBD, and I felt I hadn't really seen Shanghai. It seems, however, like there's no real centre of the city - every second street is a shopping street, some bigger than others. There's People's Square, which I haven't seen yet, and the Bund riverfront area, but there doesn't seem to be a defining Lambton Quay-like street that the CBD activity is built around.

Here's some stuff I saw this morning in the Bund, the riverfront which was the swanky port area in 1920s Shanghai, when it was in the international (British) concession.

Photo to illustrate traffic - look at this photo and then imagine every second moto driver is has their horn set to "permanently on". Cars stop at traffic crossings, but not bikes or motos, so you have to just barge in amongst the cross traffic. In the background is the Oriental Pearl tower - I'm approaching the river.

Ta da! This is Pudong, the financial area just across the river from the Bund. So the photo doesn't really capture it, it was quite cloudy/smoggy as you can see, but the buildings are only about 100 metres away from where I was standing and they're huge! The tallest building is the Oriental Pearl TV tower. At the back to the right you can just see the top of the financial centre building, which has a big hole in the top, apparently according to Feng Shui this lets the bad wind through. It's the tallest building in Shanghai, half a kilometre tall, and the world's third tallest building I think.

Then you turn 180 degrees and right behind you is the Bund, where you can see buildings that were formerly elite British drinking clubs, HQs of foreign trading companies and customs buildings. The tallest building is the Bank of China building, and to the right of it is the former headquarters of opium traders Jardine Matheson. History wahey!

Not Chairman Mao, as I originally thought, but general Chen Yi. Thanks internet!

The clouds cleared slightly for a second

So then I wandered in the few streets back from the Bund, here's some stuff I saw:

Bamboo scaffolding

Nice old guy mending and selling shoes

Every second footpath is crammed with parked motos - this one seemed to be held together with sellotape

I'm still too freaked out to go into most shops, this one was colourful enough for me to stick my head in for a photo though

A typical shopping street - like Paris, there's plane trees lining lots of roads - I guess Shanghai was the "Paris of the Orient" when some of them were planted, although they're actually quite small come to think of it.

Trinity Cathedral, known as "Red Temple" - I couldn't figure out how to get in. There was a hilarious security guard near the gate who was lolling asleep in his chair, but he kept waking up just as I went to take a picture of him. There's lots of green in the city centre - I'd often come across tiny parks or tree-lined streets.

Mmm... grandmothers

"Golden Cage" - now a bank, once home to the captive concubines of a colourful Chinese entrepreneur, according to my guide book. Should that be gilded cage?

Huge Gap ad - sure, that's how I imagine Manchester in 1969...

Giant Apple shop - full of people testing out iPads. Also the scene of me not being able to find the metro stop for half an hour and getting increasingly unglamorously sweaty. There was a huge metro train smash yesterday, 240 people hurt apparently, so line 10 was closed. Which also led to me getting a replacement bus through the Bund area for part of my metro trip - really need to learn the word for "excuse me" when getting of bus, I only know "xiexie", thank you. Thank you for getting out of the way!

Yep, it's China!

OK you've probably had a photo overload now, and I have to figure out how to get food - help!