Matt and Lisa's Adventures

28 December 2023

Our arrival into Shanghai was a little complicated. First up was we had to use the self service machine to capture our fingerprints. This worked for me but Lisa had all sorts of problems with the machines not picking up her prints. I had to push on her fingers to help. Eventually we had success.

We were applying for the 144 hour transit visa on arrival and had submitted our details in advance. We had QR codes to scan at the airport and it would then print our completed forms. Unfortunately one of the machines was out of service and the second one, while working, did not have a functioning printer. Therefore, we had to complete the forms manually. This worked OK, but was annoying considering the extensive time we had put into completing the forms in advance.

The line was then massive with only two people servicing it. We spent about 90 minutes waiting which was very frustrating especially for Lisa. She declared “this is the worst experience of my life” and “I’m done with this country, let’s just go home”. I suggested some box breathing exercises to help control her emotions. She asked if she punched me would that get us pushed up the queue? She also asked why they just couldn’t employ more people given how many people lived in China (which I thought was a fair point).

As we got closer we could see that after initial inspection the papers were given to a central person for further review. It was apparent that checking tickets for the departing flight was key. We had printed our Etihad documentation but had printed the wrong ticket without both of our names. That’s fine, because we had all our emails but they were in Gmail, which is blocked in China. We overheard another kiwi in front of us in the same situation arguing with the immigration officer.

After finally making it to the front of the queue we then had to wait again while they checked our flight details with the airline. In this time we talked with others waiting, including one guy who had to collect his bags, check in and then get to his gate before his flight left in fifteen minutes – he had no hope! Eventually I found a downloaded email with our flight details and both names. Luckily an Air New Zealand lady interceded on our behalf and we were finally done. Thanks random Air NZ lady – you saved us!

We caught the maglev train into the city centre. This was very impressive getting up to 301 kph. I had seen online that its top speed was 431 kph and told Lisa about it. She was underwhelmed with our actual speed as a result. It was very impressive – silent, smooth and felt like an aircraft traveling very close to the ground.

We then needed to catch the metro to our hotel but ran into problems with buying tickets. We had setup AliPay in advance but it relied on having internet and we hadn’t activated our eSims yet. We stopped at a McDonald’s and tried to use their WiFi but couldn’t connect. Eventually I activated roaming through my work phone briefly to get the eSims working and then we were on our way. After exiting the metro I used Apple Maps to guide us to our hotel but entered the (slightly) wrong hotel name. The maps guided to a very residential area away from the modern and busy area on Nanjing road. It took a while but eventually we realised we had it wrong and thankfully the correct location wasn’t far away and in a much better area.

We ventured out for lunch and decided we would have McDonalds to make things easy. We found one in a large market that sold all manner of amazing foods including some very expensive New Zealand Manuka honey – shows why Airways likes giving this as a gift to overseas visitors.

After lunch we wandered the area and then caught the metro to our first (of what will undoubtedly be many) Uniqlo’s. The store was good and it was all very reasonably priced.

We signed up for a walking tour of the French concession to help keep us awake as otherwise we were at risk of falling asleep too early. The tour was with Bill – a local guide who was very knowledgeable. There were three other couples including a NZ couple that had been through immigration just ahead of us – so weird hearing a NZ accent in Shanghai! The tour was very good.

• The French concession was the fashionable part of town with lots of boutiques and coffee shops. People were generally more fashionable and we were told that “fashionable” was the correct compliment to impress a lady as “pretty” may imply they were still rural which is not a desirable trait in Shanghai
• There is a very fancy and expensive Chinese liquor Moutai. It is too expensive for young people and so there are trying to sell it to them as an ice cream. If it works it’s a fantastic marketing approach: maintaining the high margin with existing drinkers, developing a new market segment and creating a path to move consumers from the ice cream to the liquor as their disposable incomes increased
• Saw a few areas that used to have old houses but had now been converted to upscale boutique stores. Would have been very interesting to explore with a bit more time.
• At one place there were lots of guys photographing a woman who was lit up in a fancy bookshop. I grabbed a photo of her as well, then looked up to see one of the guys photographing me photographing her – we both laughed at the inception moment
• Shanghai has over 1,000 Starbucks, which is insane. You see them all the time. They also have Starbucks Reserved which is fancier version with table service and more options, including alcohol.
• Bill was very careful with what he said about the government and communist history. He treaded the line between honesty and the party line. One lady on the tour mentioned Tiananmen square and he just said “we don’t talk about that”
• We saw a fancy town house owned by the basketball player Yao Ming. Bill said that he didn’t get enough protein during his childhood and blamed that on why he was short. Yao was the son of two famous basketball players and so the government had made sure he got plenty of protein while growing up!
• There were several craft beer bars that offered “free flow” where you could drink as much as you wanted for two hours for Y135 which was about NZ$25. We didn’t get the opportunity to do this but it would be great fun for a boys trip!
• There was a Vietnamese school and neighbourhood. This was because the French imported police officers from Vietnam as they didn’t have local connections and were therefore less likely to be corruptible. The British did the same, bringing over police officers from India, but the Indian officers were less respected by the locals than the Vietnamese.

We decided to find somewhere for dinner on the way back to the hotel at a nice large upscale shopping centre that had lots of options. Unfortunately, few of the menus were in English and those that were did not inspire. There was a lot of options for tripe, body parts we wouldn’t normally eat and sea creatures we had only vaguely heard of. After looking at a couple of dozen places it was quickly becoming a palava. We decided to go to the hotel restaurant. Thankfully they had an English menu and western food. We ended up eating croissants, fries and pasta – it was a very unclassy meal! Then it was off to bed at 7:30 pm for some much needed sleep!

29 December 2023

We both had good sleeps and ended up getting up a bit later than expected. We decided to visit Zhujiajiao, an ancient water town on the outskirts of Shanghai. On our way to the train station we walked along Nanjing Road which was very quiet at that hour of the morning. Outside the Apple store were people doing their morning Tai Chi.

It was a couple of trains to Zhujiajiao. The metro in Shanghai is the largest in the world and is very fast, clean and efficient. We didn’t have to wait more than a few minutes for any of the trains.

We got a boat out to the middle of the town. After boarding we got two minutes down the river before we were called back for additional passengers. Turns out it was Bill (our tour guide from the previous night) and another tour group. Crazy to run into the same person randomly in such a massive city. Along the boat trip everyone had a turn at photos at the front of the boat and as I had the prime seat at the front I had to help out as photographer for others.

The water town was very interesting. It was pitched as the Venice of China and that was reasonably accurate. It was a historic town at the corner of two rivers and the meeting point of Shanghai and two other provinces. There were lots of bridges over the river of different types and designs. In the town we wandered through the narrow streets. There were lots of shops but not very busy as it is winter and during the week – all the websites said it is very busy on weekends as it is popular with international and domestic tourists as well as the residents of Shanghai. We didn’t purchase anything and a lot of the products we wouldn’t even consider. Generally shopkeepers would talk to us and were pretty friendly.

There was a nice temple that we walked through but all the signs were in Chinese so we didn’t get a lot of context as to what we were seeing.

We had a Starbucks at the end – it wasn’t on the menu but they made me a hot chocolate and it was delicious. On our boat ride back the driver apologised as he needed to pull over and use the toilet. We were the only people on the boat, so probably a good time to do it. He took a while and Lisa made a few inappropriate comments.

Before we caught the metro back to town we needed a toilet break. Once again this was easier for men than for women. Lisa came back complaining that all the toilets were squat and she couldn’t use them as she didn’t know what to do with her pants. Eventually she managed to find a western style toilet in the disabled bathroom at the metro station. She came back looking very relieved!

There are TV screens on the Shanghai metro and they included little clips of Metroman a superhero who helps people using the metro. Mostly these are advisories telling people not to do things:

Helpful messages but a bit weird to see as a foreigner.

We made it back just in time for our Shanghai highlights walking tour, again with Bill. This was a bigger group but also included our NZ friends from yesterdays tour. They still didn’t have AliPay and so were struggling with getting around the city and doing what they needed to as very few places accepted cash.

Once again Bill’s tour was very good.

• We walked down Nanjing road which was very busy with people for the start of the weekend and the public holidays over the New Year’s period
• The Bund along the river was very impressive and a great place to stop for photos. The other side of the river was the newer area that had been developed over the past thirty years. So many amazing new buildings. It is now the financial hub of Shanghai.
• There is a bull like on Wall Street in New York. Bill said it was bigger than the one on Wall Street, or possibly just that the balls were bigger, it was a bit unclear…
• We went through the old Chinatown area. Seems weird to have a Chinatown in a Chinese city but as Shanghai had the foreign concessions this was the original Chinese area. It used to have a lot of residents but most had moved out and it was mainly shops now. A lot sold gold and jewellery. Wedding jewellery is big – the groom’s parents often buy jewellery for the bride. Lucky that’s not a NZ tradition
• We walked through the neighbourhood where Bill used to live with his grandparents. He had interesting stories about his youth and the poverty in the area. The government had moved people out of the area recently – which he said was like winning the lottery for residents as the government compensation is very lucrative
• We ended up in People’s Park which hosts marriage markets on the weekends. This is where hopeful parents post CVs for their children in the hope of finding a romantic match. The key attributes on a CV are: age, height, job and money.
• The toilets on people’s park have an indication of how long the toilet has been occupied for. I imagine that can create a bit of time pressure for people when they are trying to do their business!
• Lisa and I competed to get the best photo of Bill on our tour, I think I was a worthy winner

After the tour we chatted with the other NZ couple. They were off to Europe the following day and we compared itineraries and provided advice where we could. Then it was time for a beer! Shanghai doesn’t really do pubs or bars as we know them. I had the great idea of trying international hotels as they are more likely to have a bar as our hotel had one. We tried a couple of posh looking hotels in the area and they looked promising but their bar areas were more for afternoon teas and lacked alcohol options. We finally found a pop up outdoor bar. It was cold but we got beer!

We had noticed previously that every city we traveled to had at least one Irish bar. After a quick search we identified one that was close to us and set off. When we found it, it was between a “massage” place and a sex toy shop. More concerning, was that it had been renamed and there was no one in there.

Instead we found a bistro around the corner for beers and burgers. Very good but a long way from traditional Chinese food! While there were ran into another group of New Zealanders – we are everywhere, and easily identifiable with the accent that stands out so strongly! We had a good chat.

As we left we realised we were right next to the shopping area we had searched for a restaurant the previous night – if only we had gone a few metres down the side street…

We wandered back to the hotel running across a group of young, drunk Chinese people – nice to know that drunken shenanigans runs across all cultures!

30 December 2023

I had a terrible night’s sleep. I woke up about 2am and just could not fall asleep again. Very frustrating but I think my body clock was stuck on NZ time as 2am would have been 7am at home.

We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and I was feeling terrible due to the lack of sleep so I tried to utilise the late check out for another sleep opportunity while Lisa went shopping. Unfortunately, I spent another two hours tossing and turning on the bed with sleep continuing to elude me.

Eventually I gave up at about 11am. We checked out and then went for a wander along Nanjing Road. Initially we went to the Uniqlo store – Lisa had been successful on her Uniqlo adventure in the morning (purchasing four items) and she was very keen for me to be making purchases too. The Nanjing Road store was nowhere near as good as the other one we had been to and we struggled to find what we were after. I was also feeling pretty average and so we left without purchasing anything.

We continued wandering Nanjing Road

• There was a store with lots of people streaming in and out. We went in and there were some characters we didn’t recognise but got a wave from. The rest of the store was anime collectibles
• The Apple Store was large and impressive, as always. The prices looked comparable to home which makes sense but it did make it very expensive for locals as most things have generally been cheaper than in New Zealand
• We found a souvenir shop that was crazy busy and hard to move around. We had been looking all over Shanghai for post cards for Roman but even this store didn’t have any – probably just need to accept that postcards aren’t a thing anymore. Lisa purchased a magnet of the Chinese flag for her mother
• There was a two story M&M’s store and it was going off! So many people crowded in there. You could buy all sorts of merchandise related to the candy – the shirts were kind of funny. You could also make your own mix – but as they all taste the same it was a little unclear why you would do this. But lots of people who were doing it regardless!
• It was some sort of public holiday and so the road and shops were packed with people. It made it busy but also very vibrant. Certainly a big change from the previous morning when we had walked the road and it was dead quiet

At the end of Nanjing Road we went into People’s Park to see the marriage market that Bill had talked about the previous night. It was as described with lots of “CVs” on the ground each containing the key details for the potential brides and grooms. There were literally hundreds of these with parents paying different levels of attention to people browsing.

From there it was back to the hotel to collect bags and then board the maglev train to the airport. Thankfully it was much easier to exit China than it was to get in.

Overall thoughts on Shanghai:

• Very clean in the tourist areas with no litter and not a single homeless person
• Going away from the tourist areas showed a very different side of China – grittier and more like I had expected
• The Nanjing road are in particular was a lot of fun and a great location to stay
• Very easy to get around with the metro. Once you get the hang of AliPay that works well too
• Three days is probably a good amount of time to spend here. I would have liked to get to the museum, the large temple and the Yu gardens, but maybe on the next trip
• We ended up doing the whole trip without eating any Chinese food! The closest was me having Japanese for lunch. This was definitely not the plan but the food here was so different and it was all very daunting

We did make a lot of mistakes/learnings on our trip

• Need AliPay or WeChat pay as that is how everything is paid for. Either one works fine, which is lucky as we up couldn’t get WeChat pay to work. The NZ couple we met only had cash and that was a major problem for them. They even had to walk home one night as the metro ticket machine wouldn’t accept their cash
• When I went to check out I said we had breakfast in the morning expecting to pay. But they said it was free. Would have been good to know that on the first day!
• We needed to have activated the eSIM when at the airport and on WiFi. Otherwise it is a real challenge particularly for using AliPay on your phone to pay for things which requires internet
• Double check the name and location of your hotel, so you don’t end up in the wrong place
• There is a translation function in Apple camera and in AliPay. This would have been helpful for reading menus
• Most of all – make sure you have your departing flight details if you are utilising the temporary visa on arrival!