SHANGHAI: Venturing out to Shanghai Station (Day 2)

First things first...our accommodation. I shared an apartment flat with three others located in Yangpu District (楊浦區). There's three rooms in the flat and it was really spacious...what a surprise to see in a Chinese city! It had a solarium for hanging laundry and a very open view.

view from the apartment in Yangpu District, Shanghai

The flat was fairly dusty though. It seemed that nobody has lived there for a while. But we found out later that this dust came from somewhere all the time, and no matter how much we swept (yes, we swept, or technically I did) the dust kept coming back. The shower wouldn't drain properly and we had to clean it out with our hands...luckily there were rubber gloves to use. We had a toilet overflow once and had to call someone to fix it (phew, it wasn't the BIG BUSINESS when it happened).

We decided to take a walk on campus in a massive group of about ten and to find lunch in the cafeteria. It was hot. Everyone was complaining about the heat. But I was still up with my camera pointing in every direction when I came across this "stone tomb":

This "tomb" is actually a sign...saying "Danger! There are electrical wires underneath." Very interesting and unique, I thought...

We found out when we got to the cafeteria that we couldn't eat there because you need to prepay using a student card...so...our idea of super cheap food melts there and then (It was really cheap you can get a meal for three RMB.)

We left the campus and found a Western-style cafe to lunch in (much more expensive...about 25 RMB = $4...which is still not even comparable to standards here), cooled down, re-energized and got going again. I came up with the idea of going to the "Tourist Centre" (that was supposed to exist according to my Lonely Planet guide) at the Shanghai Station.

We decided to go local and went for transit...first we had to get to the metro station at Jiangwan Town (江灣鎮). After figuring out what those bus stop signs mean we took the 713 bus there...it took only about five minutes. We figured though that the station was a bit too far to walk to (especially under the heat). When we got off the bus, we realized that the station was actually on the other side of the avenue...a wide avenue...and we had to half-jaywalk it since motorists and pedestrians alike did not fully obey the traffic signals. It was a total challenge.

There...as you can see we made it onto the train station platform. This station is the terminus station so any trains coming in are empty with all the seats available to you. It will probably seem that getting a seat is no problem when you see signs beneath you feet indicating where to line up properly. Until you realize that this is really a false illusion when...

...the train arrives and people scramble onto the train like this is the last train to ever run in the history of mankind...and fighting for a seat like fighting over food for a hungry family. I think we ended up with a seat. And so the journey to the city center begins...


Shanghai Station! The main terminal facing a large plaza. This is the south side, the modern side, the civilized side, the good side. If you happen to be on the north side...you would see a the backside of the same station, only older, uglier and more chaotic.

We gave up on finding the tourist office (it was nowhere to be located) and decided to find a place to buy the prepaid phone card for cell phones. After asking directions at the kiosk shop of hotel, we found our way to a building that sells electronic products and found a shop that sells them, starting at 50RMB each. It was actually enough to last for our month's stay there. The store owners let us chose our numbers (according to the back of the envelope of the card) but it was pretty pointless since the phone numbers are 13 digits...none of which will be easy to remember anyway.

Finished with our errands, we whizzed our way through the underground mall which connected the Shanghai Station with the metro line that would bring us back to our place.

Line 3 (三號線) platform and the view from it...a newer Shanghai built against the older one.

Later that night, we headed out to hunt for our first meal. After a lot of picking and choosing, we finally sat down at this restaurant that served mainly grilled meat. We ordered many skewers...and some of us added a bowl of noodles just to fill up. Very delicious and cheap.