Frosty New Year Luxembourg

It was a lovely, chilled Christmas - where we all grew a Roger moustache.

Afterward, as usual, I flew to Luxembourg to stay with JC/his parents.  I wasn't in the mood for much driving, so we did some local walks in the beautiful frosty Bettembourg.  We spotted some deer.  The trees were beautiful in their frozen cloaks. 

The next day we did another 10 km walk and, this time, we followed a trail.  The 'Ris of the Parc Merveilleux' trail was established a couple of years ago and follows the footsteps of a local giant.  It is dotted with sculptures/paintings along the way - I do love a mapped trail with things to find as you go along.

We ended up doing more than the expected 10.2 km as road works blocked our route so we did an extra squiggle on the southern border. 

We celebrated New Year, did a few other walks and generally helped JC's parents out where required.  The drive back on the Sunday was a drag.  It was very wet, but fortunately not icy.  This is the Luxembourg/Belgium border at 0900 - blink and you miss it.

We had a palaver going through Calais as some ferry sailings had been cancelled and everyone, it seemed, had re-booked onto Le Tunnel.  We arrived 90 mins before our train and it took so long to clear both passport controls we missed it and eventually left France 2.5 hours after arriving in Calais. C'est la vie.

Shanghai (days three and four) - History and Shanghai museums plus more Bund time

Wednesday 30 October 2024 

Whenever I travel I do like finding the quirks of different countries and how normal things to them appear strange to me.  This morning we found an official u-turn sign in the road with accompanying traffic light (and, yes, I nearly did get run over in my pursuit of this).  

Then we walked through a park where it was very clear that the grass was to be viewed, but not used.  It meant that locals stood on the paths to do their daily stretches.  There were lots of rules.

We started with the Shanghai History Museum.  It was interesting to learn how Shanghai had developed from ancient times.  The land on which the city sits has been reclaimed and, as it sits at the confluence of two rivers, has fertile soil and easy access to the South China Sea.  It naturally became a trading hub.

The more modern history was a tale of foreign control (British, French, Japanese) and wrestling back authority to be self ruled.  Translation of some of the commentary suggested that the messaging was Chinese-centric - but perhaps all national museums are like this?  However, if you had questions, you weren't allowed to ask.

This is Stephen.  He's one of the two HSBC (the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) lions made in the UK and shipped to Shanghai during Britain's occupation.  His mate is called Statt.  Stephen is a wonderful name for a lion.

We popped to a vegan restuarant which was a mistake.  I forget that many veggie restaurants cater for non-meat eaters who miss meat.  My veggie soup tasted very Unami and rather like oxo and JC didn’t like his weird plum tasting beef.  The surly owner didn’t help!

Ji’an sculpture garden was a pleasant distraction.  Although you most certainly were never allowed on the grass.  It was either taped off or signed and patrolled - shame.  Anyway, I liked the ostrich with many heads.

The sculptures were cool despite my nemisis, cows. ;-)

We ambled back east and ended up walking all the way back to the Bund.  It was fun walking down one of Shanghai’s main shopping drags, but sad to see the older areas being flattened - presumably for more high rise.  That is a lot of cable!

We arrived on the Bund at dusk.  JC spent over two hours here taking shots.  There were quite a few photographers with tripods around and occasionally they'd peer over another's shoulder to see what they had lined up.  I found some rules by the river and was interested to note what was banned, including releasing terrapins.

The lights of Pudong (across the river from the Bund) switch on at 1800 and the sky turned from grey to an orange glow.  They switch them off at 2200, which I decided we had to witness, so back at the hotel I dragged JC out onto the terrace at the allotted time to check.  Yes, they did.

Thursday 31 October 2024 

Today was our last day in China.  JC was super keen to visit the Chinese bronze antiquities of the Shanghai Museum (East) so we spent most of the day here.  We arrived, soaked, in pouring rain as Shanghai was on the edge of typhoon Kong-rey, sitting over Taiwan.  I liked the Chinese umbrella storage system where you could lock your brolly up.

We started in the Ancient Chinese Bronze gallery.  There were some beautiful objects here such as the jia (wine vessel) dated Late Shang (13th century to 11th century BCE) - over 3000 years old!  And a really ancient cowrie container with eight yaks, Eastern Han (206 BCE-8 CE).

Bronze musical instruments - bronze drums and a set of bells 'bianzhong'. 

We then wandered through other galleries with some highlights being a Tang dynasty warrior and camel (618-907 CE) and a wall full of porcelain bowls from the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE).

It was nice that some of the things we saw we’d actually also come across in situ.  I was, however, a bit disconcerted to find that many of museum pieces had been 'reconstructed'.  This bronze jia was in 13 pieces and they restored it using 3D metal printing.  Hmmm, not sure I wouldn't rather just see the original with holes.  

The museum was heaving with school kids.  I had no idea how many were there but it looked to be a whole school-full.  The noise levels of their chatter was literally deafening.  My hearing aids, which try to remove background noise, couldn't cope and kept switching off which was very disconcerting.  The only relief I had was to dive into an unpopular, and hence quiet, gallery and reset them.

JC did round two of the bronze antiquities but I was museum'ed out by now so I plonked myself in the coffee shop, took my hearing aids out and did a puzzle.  Sometimes you just have to zone out ;-)

The weather was still very wet and windy.  We went downtown on the metro, shopped, ate and generally tried to dodge the pouring rain.

Friday 01 November 2024

We left the hotel at 0500 in the typhoon rain.  We were lucky that our flight wasn't delayed or cancelled.  We flew into Beijing airport which was very smoggy.  We ate our last decent Chinese food, although I wasn't sure which meal this was anymore as we'd been up so long.  Beijing airport has a policy that all prices are the same inside as on the high-street.  I think it's the first airport I've been to which mandates this - sadly I don't think it will catch on. 

We were curious that the airport wasn't full, or had many international flights.  It turned out that we were in the newer of the two international airports here - this one, Beijing Daxing (PKX), opened in 2019.  As well as being refreshingly empty, it also had a beautiful Chinese garden you could wander around.

It was a peaceful spot to re-charge before the long haul flight back to LHR.  The flight was fine, my back behaved - probably because I was so chilled after three weeks on holiday - and we landed into grey, soggy London with a bucket full of happy Chinese memories. 

Shanghai (days one and two) - An abattoir, Aurora Museum and the Bund

Monday 28 October 2024

We caught the train to Shanghai today.  Huanshan railway station was like the others - departure gates which you line up in-front of 20 minutes before your train is due, the 'special assistance' queue for non-Chinese ID card holders and food shops.  McDonalds was the only coffee shop around and it was served, as our coffees often were, in individual plastic bags.

It was a 3 hour 15 train journey.  About 90 minutes in, the landscape changed from hills, towns and tunnels to a plain full of high rise flats.  The horizon was obscured by a permanent haze (smog).  All you could see was the metropolis of Shanghai - tall grey buildings.  We took the metro to our hotel.  I like the pretty metro cards.

We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening exploring.  First up was the Old Slaughter House of 1933.   This was Shanghai’s abattoir designed to herd the animals up slip-free ramps to their death.  In its heyday, around 1200 pigs, sheep and cattle would be killed daily.  Apparently the pigs were kept on the ground floor because they couldn’t walk up the ramps fast enough.

It has a circular interior surrounded by 26 'air bridges', walkways and steps to manage the huge operation.  The air bridges were of different widths to control the flow of the animals.  Once operations stopped it fell into disrepair and only, in the last few years, has been revitalised as a shopping/eating area.  This hasn’t taken off and the building is full of potential but empty/closed establishments.

It was eerie and beautiful, in a brutalist concrete fashion.  Its major client nowadays being similarly minded photographers.

We headed down to a main tourist centre of Shanghai, the Bund.  It is the waterfront on the Huangpu river and both sides are fronted by iconic buildings.  At night the light show is full on and brings out the tourists in hordes.  On the east side is the central business district with tall glizty skyscrapers.  The west side has the older government buildings, including one based on Big Ben.

It was very popular and the police herded us across the roads in a highly controlled manner.  Wherever there were people, there were security/police monitoring them.  Security cameras were everywhere in droves (apparently half of the world’s CCTV cameras are in China).  In Shanghai there were tourist police stationed on pretty much every corner: kiosks in the shopping centres, vans along the roads and security personnel patrol public buildings.

Tuesday 29 October 2024

We had breakfast on the hotel’s 4th floor terrace planning our day.  Somehow we’d managed to pick up a Korean map of Shanghai, instead of Chinese, so we ended up variously translating from both Korean and Chinese to help with the planning!

We headed across the Huangpu river.  It's not easy to cross as there are no bridges, and the tunnels are only for vehicles, so it was either a circuitous metro trip or ferry.  We found the ferry one minute too late and had to wait 29 minutes for the next one - lucky JC got to spend it with an impatient Ruth!  But the ferry view was lovely, and I spotted a lighthouse. 

The Aurora museum is a collection by Yung Tai Chen who gathered pottery, porcelain, Buddhist statues and jade artefacts of great historical significance.  There were pottery figurines from the Han (206 BCE to 220 CE) through to Tang dynasties (618 - 906 CE).  Pottery figures first appeared in the Eastern Zhou period (1046 - 256 BCE) buried to accompany the person in the after life.  By the Han dynasty these had become a serious status symbol - think Terracotta Army.  I liked the Tang breastfeeding lady on a camel and an Eastern Han (25-220 CE) two storey house.

Some of the exhibits were quite interesting, particularly the burial artefacts from the Han dynasties.  This burial suit is apparently made from 2903 pieces of jade sewn with gold wire.

There was also a jade floor,  one devoted to blue and white porcelain and a Buddha floor.  

We stopped for what turned out to be one of the best meals I’d had in China.  It was aubergine, Thai basil and rice.  Strangely, considering where we are, whenever we ordered rice it took ages to come.  Dishes of meat and vegetables appeared swiftly but rice was always last.  I think it was because they cook it to order, but it does mean your other dishes got cold waiting for the rice to appear.

We took the ferry back and I had a quick peep of the Gutzlaff signal tower which is on the west side of the Huangpu River.   Sadly you couldn't go in.  An observation station was established around here in 1865 with the signal tower added in 1883.  The sign said was it was one of the only two known Alonobo style buildings in the world, but a google doesn't enlighten me further.  

Next up was the much recommended Yuyuan gardens.  These were designed in 1559 and were once the epitome of peace and quiet in Shanghai.  No more.  The gardens are on the tourist trail - pretty much every "tour of Shanghai in 4 hours" group swings by here and a Buddhist temple a short drive away.  Needless to say it was heaving and we didn’t enjoy.  

Some of the carvings were beautiful.

We stayed to get our money’s worth (!) but were grateful to leave.

We walked towards an allegedly independent shopping area only to find it hijacked by global brands.   However we walked to another similar area, Tianzifang, and found this a lot more genuine. Small alley ways with trinket shops.  Again, aimed at tourists - my theory is the likelihood of western tourists is predicted by the amount of signage in English - but a nice change from corporate merchandise.

On the metro back to the hotel our train was very yellow which amused me.  I also realised I'd been breaking the first rule of metro escalators which is "no walking".  I ignored this and continued to march up and down them when I could.

We went and stood on the hotel's terrace and realised we could see the snazzy Bund.