Day 1: Shanghai, Sunday, June 17, 2012

Our field trip “Fast cities, slow cities, capital cities” started today with a meeting at the youth hostel in the Jing'an district in Shanghai. All of us made it to Shanghai and everyone in our group of 24 seemed to be excited about the experience over the coming two weeks. Some students arrived a couple of days earlier and already had the chance to explore the city. A couple others arrived today after an easy flight from Zurich and an exciting ride on the Maglev train from Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

Even though Shanghai is a city of about 23 million people, many areas in the historic center of the city, the Puxi area, feel very neighborly. Lots of trees make this area very green. Located in the Yangze River Delta, Shanghai is one of China`s most important commercial centers with a vital financial and technology industry. In addition, the region is home to China`s largest container port (Yangshan Deep-Water Port), which we will visit in the coming days. Our focus in these first couple of days, however is on the city and broader region of Shanghai.

Xintiandi neighborhood in Shanghai (Photo: Heike Mayer)

After our initial meeting at the hostel, we started to head out. We needed to take the umbrella with us because it started to rain in the afternoon. We headed for the Xintiandi neighborhood which represents an interesting redevelopment project from the mid 1990s. The area was home to the traditional Shikumen houses. Shikumen stands for “stone gate” and the houses were arranged along narrow alleys to which these stone gates provided the entrance. By the 1980s, the houses fell in disarray and starting in the mid-1990s a Hong Kong-based developer and it is now a fashionable lifestyle district with cafés, restaurants and shopping malls. The district is also home to the Shikumen Museum, which is well worth a visit because it explains the history of the area and its redevelopment. The exhibit noted that more than 2,500 families were displaced through this redevelopment. Even though the renovation of the traditional Shikumen houses is quite a success (particularily if we consider the speed with which China is developing its cities, which often results in dramatic losses of traditional neighborhoods), the district represents a familiar place of global consumption and entertainment. Starbucks and a Paulaner pub give tourists a familiar feeling and suggest that the place can be interchangeable with any other place in the world.

Pudong skyline in the rain (Photo: Heike Mayer)

The rain made taking pictures difficult (Photo: Heike Mayer)

From Xintiandi we took the metro to Nanjing Road where we had the opportunity to stroll for a little while before dinner. We enjoyed our first Chinese family-style meal in a restaurant near the Bund. The food was shared on a revolving tablet (in the United States the tablet is called “lazy Susan”) and the waiters did not stop serving small plates of diverse dishes ranging from green vegetables to pork, beef and seafood. After dinner we walked to the Bund. Even though squalls of wind and rain increased heavily and we were all soaking wet, we enjoyed the view of the Bund at night.

Step count on our pedometer: 22 516

Heike Mayer