Sleeping all the way to Shanghai


Wednesday 10th January 2007

Got a really good night’s sleep – the best since we’ve been away – a good ten hours. Which surprised us because Xi’an station was even more chaotic than Beijing, the train was older and packed, but we were ok in our ‘buy out’ four berth cabin. We saw lots of people from the seats (those without berths) trying to upgrade, but warnings we’d had that the train guards (and there are loads and loads of them) might take bribes to give them our two spare beds, proved unfounded.

Arrived in Shanghai at around 10.30 am having boarded the train at 6pm last night! Staying at the Astor House Hotel, on Val and Rin’s recommendation – and it was a really good recommendation. The room is good with an amazing view right along the Bund – so location great. We had a relaxing day, long hot shower to get rid of the train dirt, and a walk along the Bund and the Nanjing Road – the main shopping street. Shanghai and Beijing don’t seem like they’re in the same country. Beijing was historic, and beautiful, clean and lovely. Shanghai is a huge, clean modern city of skyscrapers, all beautifully lit up at night. Much more like I imagine Hong Kong or Singapore to be and not at all as you would imagine a major city in a communist country. Sid’s reading The History of Tractors in Ukranian and it quotes Lenin as saying ‘Communism is socialism with electricity’. Sid says Shanghai is a good example of Neon-Communism.


One side of the river, the Bund, has all the historic buildings and the hotel we are in was formerly known as Richard’s hotel and dates from 1846 – from British Colonial times. It was the first major international hotel in China and feels full of history – Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Bertrand Russell all stayed here.
A couple of things seem to be the same in each of the three cities we have visited: there are few westerners anywhere; no-one understands much English and we have to find the few who do to write down our destinations in Chinese for us for the taxi drivers to understand; the art students ‘practising their English’ is a national scam and not local to any one region.

A brilliant meal tonight in a restaurant called 1221, a recommendation from the Lonely Planet. But all the food has been excellent and much more like the very best Chinese restaurants at home than we could ever have hoped. But at a fraction of the price. I’m going to post this tonight as I won’t connect to the internet again until Vietnam.

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