My big trip over the winter season was to China. I haven’t been back in China since 2018, so it has certainly been a while. The trip was mostly to see relatives and spend Chinese New Year there with family, but managed to do a few touristy things here and there. Here are the highlights of my trip.
Evening stroll on the Bund (外滩) in Shanghai, with the modern skyline in Pudong on the east side of the Huangpu River, and the golden-lit European style buildings on the west side.
Shanghai
The three tallest buildings in Shanghai are all located in the modern financial district of Lujiazui (陆家嘴). The tallest is the Shanghai Tower in the center, and it’s the 3rd tallest building in the world. We stayed in the Grand Hyatt which is on the top floors of the Jinmao Tower on the right.
The Grand Hyatt Shanghai has a 30+ story center atrium. A little scary for those with fear of heights.
The one city that I’ve visited for the first time on this trip was Shanghai (上海), China’s largest city that’s located in the middle of the country’s east coast. Unlike the other cities, we visited the city mainly just for fun. Shanghai has a mix of modern high-rise skyline and older, more historic parts, both of which are worth seeing for a first-time visitor like me.
The Oriental Pearl Tower (东方明珠广播电视塔) and the big traffic circle + circular pedestrian bridge.
Visited Shanghai’s City God Temple (城隍庙) to pray for good fortune in the New Year.
A stroll through Yu Garden (豫园), a beautifully manicured Chinese garden with multiple sections and interesting rock formations.
The commercial area surrounding Yu Garden is also built in the classic architecture style, and decked out for Chinese New Year.
We stayed in the modern financial district of Lujiazui (陆家嘴), and took the subway everywhere. Chinese big cities have very good public transportation these days, and Shanghai’s 20ish subway lines got us to all the spots we wanted to go, even to spots in the countryside like Zhujiajiao Ancient Town. A “city” in China includes the central urban core and a large outlying area, so they are more like counties in the USA. So even a giant city like Shanghai has plenty of suburban and rural areas.
The famous Nanjing Road pedestrian street (南京路). Less crowded than usual because of the cold and wet weather.
Took the ~2 hour one-way subway ride to visit Zhujiajiao (朱家角), a preserved water town with old style architecture and rivers/canals through the town. It’s way out in the country side but still considered to be a part of Shanghai.
Xintiandi (新天地), a commercial district featuring classic shikumen (石库门) buildings with western eateries and shops.
My overall impression of Shanghai is that it’s a huge city, although not that touristy outside of a few areas like the Bund or Nanjing Road. It doesn’t have the ancient history that some other Chinese cities have. I still enjoyed my visit though, and certainly enjoyed my share of Shanghainese/Suhang cuisine and all the buns/dumplings they are famous for.
Classic Shanghainese pan fried buns and noodle soups from Yang’s Dumplings (小杨生煎), a well known restaurant chain.
Nanning
Like on my previous trips back to China, we went to Nanning (南宁), the capital of the Guangxi Autonomous Region, to visit family. With China’s high speed rail network, Nanning is only a 3-4 hour train ride from Guangzhou. Nanning is a smaller city compared to the other cities I visited on this trip, although it still has a population of 8+ million. Being “smaller”, Nanning doesn’t have as many subway lines, so we actually made good use of Didi ride-hailing to get around, which is very convenient and very cheap compared to Uber or Lyft in North America.
Guangxi, especially the northern part of the province like Guilin, has its own cuisine call Guibei cuisine (桂北菜). We tried some and it was delicious.
While we spent most of the time visiting family, we did get to go Qingxiushan Park (青秀山) to sight see a little bit.
Easy hike up to the top of the Qingxiushan from the north entrance. Lots of gardens and temples on the way up. We’ve been to this park in 2010, but the only thing I remember from the previous time was the temple.
The view of the city of Nanning from Qingxiushan
Qingxiushan is a huge park, and even had a tropical plants garden where the were spraying mist at the entrance.
These two old apartment buildings connected with crisscross stairs are a social media photo spot. They even have a name called 鸳鸯楼.
