Shanghai: The Bund

By Sally Franz

I arrived in Shanghai during Golden Week to visit one of my daughters who lives there. Turns out Golden Week is like Thanksgiving Break here in the states. It is an entire week when people visit family, site-see, and eat moon cakes (a small decorated stack of cardboard-like flour substance…if you get my drift). Pretty sure that it’s an acquired taste. I wasn’t there long enough to acquire it. 

It is also a time when every street, subway and venue looks like Manhattan at rush hour. (Think “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and then double it). Lucky for me my daughter knows the ins and outs of the city enough to know when to jump on or off a subway line, when to hoof it and when to just call a driver service. For most families, transportation is electric scooters. Everyone has one and there are dedicated lanes with medians to protect the drivers.

If you are going to China, a few days in Shanghai will be worth your while. (Try to avoid the second week of October/Golden Week if you hate crowds). As the most populated city in the world with 24 million people, it also has the busiest port in the world. It is easy to see why Shanghai is the business hub of Chinese innovation. The city boasts a fantastic infrastructure of subways, buses, taxis and roadways, making it is easy to get around. Many people speak English, but it helps to have your phrase book or a translation App handy on a device. I suggest an App that can audibly speak Mandarin, post the characters or pinyin, which is when Chinese words are put into Roman letters for sounding out. Brilliant when you think about it. All Roman letter based languages can read and sound out Chinese, almost an Esperanto-effect. Well, sort of. First you have to remember that “iao” is sounded ‘ow’ and “xia” is ‘she’. And to ask a question, end it in “ma” which is a verbal question mark. Sort of like in Valley Girl Talk when sentences end with, “Right?”

There is a thriving educated middle class in Shanghai with malls, movie theaters and parks everywhere. It is a great city to visit: no litter, low crime and no shoving on the subway. And I never saw a traffic accident the entire congested week I was there. Aggression is at a low.

But the most exciting place at night is the thriving area of The Bund or Waitan, which means outer beach. Here the Huangpu River separates the very modern downtown area of Lujiazui in the Pudong District from the older Bund International area. At The Bund you stroll on a wide boardwalk along the river flanked by old international palace size embassies and government buildings that have since been converted into hotels, malls, oil companies’ HQs and banks.

The walkway faces across the river to an ultra-modern mega skyscraper-filled skyline of neon. The contrast of old and new is stunning. Futuristic buildings carry knick-names such as the Pearl and the Bottle Opener. The Bottle Opener, aka The Shanghai World Financial Center, is 93 stories high. The buildings shine polished metal and glass by day and reflect building-high neon light shows at night. The entire Pudong downtown area looks like Times Square if it were on the Hudson. 

A fabulous restaurant to try near the boardwalk side is “Forgotten Heaven” at 17 Yan’an East Rd. WaiTan, Hangpu Qu. Authentic dishes with a very helpful staff. But make a reservation especially weekends and holidays.

And here is a little known fact. Most upscale Chinese do not eat rice with their dishes. They prefer noodles. Asking for rice pegs you as lower class or a tourist…or both. But if you like rice go ahead. With the photo ops left, right, and center at The Bund, they will likely know you are a tourist anyway.

Sally Franz and her third husband live on the Olympic Peninsula. She has two daughters, a stepson, and three grandchildren. Sally is the author of several humor books including Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey and The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Menopause. She hosts a local radio humor segment, “Baby Boomer Humor with Sassy Sally”.