{"id":30863,"date":"2019-11-15T07:48:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T23:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=30863"},"modified":"2026-03-14T19:23:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T11:23:52","slug":"5-days-in-shanghai-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2019\/11\/15\/5-days-in-shanghai-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Days in Shanghai – Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

The five-day trip to Shanghai<\/strong> actually got off to a rocky start. We were initially supposed to fly on SQ directly from Singapore, but the lack of sufficient seats for the entire travel party meant that our travel agent had to book us on an alternate airline \u2014 China Eastern in this case. And it was a pretty dismal experience from that point: the flight<\/strong> took off an hour late, the onboard meals were perfunctory, the flight didn’t carry immigration cards for visitors \u2014 which meant additional time had to be wasted at immigration clearance for the entire party to complete declarations. And at baggage claim, my luggage<\/strong> did not arrive, and another person’s luggage case was damaged, apparently from handling. The total delay amounted to more than two hours, and also meant that we had to immediately change our evening itinerary as we only had time for dinner, followed by a late check-in to our accommodation. Still, the flight landed safely, so one should be thankful for that.<\/p>\n

If I could say one thing about Shanghai, it’s this: no visitors to the city would walk away without being impressed by how far the country has come \u2014 in living standards, wealth, and technological advances. I remembered being already impressed during my last visit in 2012. This visit, I was bowled over by the sheer number of commercial skyscrapers<\/strong>, especially in the Pudong district. The Chinese clearly show how proud they are of this city \u2014 e.g. through the light-ups on sky-reaching apartment and office blocks, particularly in the city center. Our bus traveled over Nanpu Bridge<\/strong> every evening, and the structure’s size and design \u2014 e.g. the inner rings that lead up to the main bridge followed by a marvellous view of the Huangpu River \u2014 are awe-inspiring. There are still huge swathes of the country stuck in poverty, and the country is particularly afflicted with income inequality. But clearly, China’s big cities are now modern and easily the equivalent, if not ahead, of many other first-world countries’.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A signed basketball from one of China’s most famous exports.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Wikitravel, violent crime is rare in this city. But like every other large city \u2014 Singapore and Japanese cities being the notable exceptions in Asia \u2014 there is petty crime. Interestingly, the presence of law enforcement<\/strong> in the major retail and tourist strips is prominent: there must have been several hundred police officers along the entire Nanjing Road stretch. The major pedestrian and traffic junctions were routinely manned by a dozen uniformed personnel, four of whom routinely stood ramrod straight at their posts in their immaculately ironed uniforms. They weren’t just intimidating any potential felons: they were alert to pedestrians who were jaywalking \u2014 sometimes unintentionally \u2014 and sounding loud whistles to warn them of oncoming vehicular traffic.<\/p>\n

As with large high-density cities too, maintaining public cleanliness<\/strong> is a real challenge. I observed several teams of public cleaners doing their rounds, but they also seemed to be struggling to keep up, especially in the city center. The pavements or public roads are relatively trash-free, but the sideroads are a different story. And toilet cleanliness \u2014 the male ones at least \u2014 is a huge hit and miss. Several were clogged with waste, including in malls where the exteriors look quite modern.<\/p>\n

I had some issues with currency<\/strong>. Oh, the notes \u2014 even if still very much paper and not of the modern polymer type \u2014 were generally of good quality throughout, and their values easily recognizable in large print. The difficulty I had, however, was that China has changed its currency notes. I had a stack of old 50 yuan (50 yuan = SGD10) notes from previous trips, and these could not be used anymore. The lass in one small bubble tea shop recognized these old notes, and was actually interested in taking them as a keepsake \u2014 they were still in mint condition \u2014 so happily exchanged one previous-generation note for a used but current 50 yuan note. The locals generally do not even use note currency to begin with, with China going all out in its push for digital payment systems.<\/p>\n

\"\"
People Mountain People Sea.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I experienced a good amount of pushing and shoving while walking the streets during my last trip, but oddly, this was far less common this trip. I’m not sure if social graces<\/strong> have actually improved since then \u2014 the Singapore entrepreneur we spoke to said from his observations that no, it hasn’t really changed \u2014 and I observed instances of buses arriving at a stop, and locals immediately rushing to the bus door all at once to get on the bus, pushing and elbowing each other. And spitting is still a norm. To be clear, that exercising of body fluids is considered a cleansing action in Chinese culture, but it’s nonetheless something that could be deeply unsettling for visitors to the country.<\/p>\n

The weather<\/strong> was quite cooperative throughout. We got just a light drizzle one night, and the rest of the days alternated evenly between good daylight but cloudy or foggy \u2014 e.g. day 03’s visit to Oriental Pearl Tower \u2014 and just perfectly sunny \u2014 e.g. day 05’s visit to Shanghai Museum. There was no smog throughout, thankfully.<\/p>\n

Internet-access<\/strong>-wise, I picked up a travel data SIM, and was also on a data roaming plan with Singtel. Interestingly, even though both were finally riding on the same local telco, the quality of signal I got on both could be as different as night and day \u2014 even when on the same mobile device. Nonetheless, being on data roaming meant that I could still be connected to essential Google services \u2014 especially Google Maps and News \u2014 and also Facebook and WhatsApp throughout. The hotel and public WIFI, of course, are subject to access rules from the Great Firewall of China. So, if you’re traveling to China and need ready access to social networks, then seriously look into getting travel data SIM cards, or activate your telco’s data roaming service if you can accept the likely hefty data charges.<\/p>\n

That’s a wrap for this short series of posts on Shanghai. To be honest, I don’t actually have an inclination to travel to China for leisure normally, as there are other countries in north-east Asia I’d prefer to visit \u2014 specifically Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. But all things considered, this was a good trip, even if my observations here are limited as this was just a five-day trip. There is plenty to see and do within easy reach for a week. So, if you’re keen to visit a Chinese showcase of city modernisation, Shanghai should be on your shortlist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The five-day trip to Shanghai actually got off to a rocky start. We were initially supposed to fly on SQ directly from Singapore, but the lack of sufficient seats for the entire travel party meant that our travel agent had<\/p>\n

Read More 5 Days in Shanghai – Reflections<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[666,619],"class_list":["post-30863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-shanghai-2019","tag-travel-retrospection","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/blog-2019-shangai-gs-day-04-IMG20191107143951-chenghuang-temple-street-bazaar.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38464,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30863\/revisions\/38464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}