Badminton park (6.9.2009)

The next thing on the pipeline was the trip to the old city and (former) French Concession.

The old city radiated this old bazaar spirit with its hundreds of small boutiques. Probably the most ethereal visit so far was the tour around Yuyuan Gardens, which regrettably (on Sunday) was filled with tourists from China, Japan and Spain. Small ponds and pavilions in lush green surroundings, along with rockeries and nice little stone pavings.. The ponds were filled with big red fish. Yeah, Yuyuan Gardens I could have as my backyard. Another place in the old city was the Temple of City Gods. It was nothing compared to Beijing's Lama Temple, as it was just too commercial and had no pride in it.

Multiple parks, such as Huaihai and Fuxing park became familiar along the streets of French Concession. French Concession is an area near and around Huaihai road, which once was a place, which was inhabited by the French. It is apparent on first glance: both sides of roads are covered with trees, and the architecture has France all over it. There was this splurge-complex in French-like surroundings, Xiantiandi (Heaven and Earth). It appeared to be for those people, who also like their pedestrian streets to be free of any kind of reality that a city has to offer ;).

Lonely Planet misguided us as we were hungry as hell, restaurant was nowhere to be found. So we walked a bit until with our last handpowers we managed to crawl into a Chinese local restaurant in Ruijin Er road. We ate the Shanghaian basic food: xiao bao, some kind of fried buns with meat inside. We had no idea what other dishes they had to offer, because they had only Chinese menus. Fortunately we had this paper of various dishes, with both pinyin (Chinese in English) and Chinese characters. I took the best egg-tomato-stew ever, I hear it is the basic food in every restaurant. Silja took something, and finally they brought in forth of us what appeared to be some aubergine-pork-stew. It was delicious! And man we were stuffed up.. the price: 35 kuai - little less than 4 euros, so maybe 1.9 euros per eater.

However, the best road in the French Concession was definitely the Shaoxing road.. maybe because it was so calm in Shanghai's otherwise congested neighbourhoods. The street was beautiful with its trees lining nicely as far as the eye could see. And there was this park (Shaoxing), to which we went to watch old men play cards and few kids play badminton. Suddenly one of the kids asked me to play badminton in the park. I said why not, and punished him (or her?) severely :). But man I was sweaty. After this we retreated back to our hostel via metro - although first buying some Suntory and Snow beers.