Beating Summer Heat in Shanghai - Adventure Year Week 7

posted on: July 30, 2019

Shanghai's hot and humid summers are no joke, but thankfully there are plenty of ways to cope.  Last week's record setting temperatures were much harder on my Northern European friends, where there is usually no need for air conditioning, than it was for us in China.  Even last Sunday, when we escaped to Shanghai Wonderland Intercontinental to get out of the thickness of the city air for a day, we were able to enjoy most of the natural environment and wonderland offerings from behind large windows in a comfortably air conditioned room.  Kind of ironic, but seeing the people walking the glass bridge in the old quarry or taking the zip line looked entirely unappealing when the heat index was above 110ºF.  However, the natural scenery felt perfectly beautiful and serene in the shade of a ceiling with an air conditioning vent blowing our way.



Some malls in Shanghai actually have a really great set of options for spending a day at the mall.  Crafting classes on demand, cooking classes on demand, music or language lesson classes on demand, tea education classes on demand... are all things you can find in Shanghai malls, alongside global brands like Adidas, H&M, Zara, Nike, etc.  I think this is something the United States could really learn from when it comes to malls- creating more experiences for sale, not just things for sale.  Parents can either join in the activity for their kid, create something of their own, or leave their kid with a teacher or class and grab a coffee and relax or go do shopping without kids.  It's brilliant, really, and I bet it even boosts sales in the rest of the mall.



Then there are also restaurants that are experiences onto themselves, like the Spacelab Restaurant.  I'd call this a modernized version of the restaurants with trains running around the edges, or as I recently experienced in Kansas City (despite it being there forever) a modern version of Fritz's Sandwiches.  At Spacelab, food and drinks are ordered on an iPad, and then delivered via a rollercoaster car that rolls down a series of rails throughout the restaurant.




Of course, novelty comes in many varieties, and cafes that need to stand out and compete against more popular brands often need some kind of niche to break through the density or popularity of other options.  Enter, cafes with strong themes, like this Polar Cafe full of seat cushions representing polar bears and even marshmallows made to look like polar bears.



When I'm having tough luck finding cafes to relax in, because everyone else has the same idea about how they want to get out of the house nearby, but also stay inside air conditioning, I start to look around at what the hotels have to offer, especially when it comes to lounges where I can settle in with a bottle of sparking water or a pot of tea.  I gravitate toward historic hotels and boutique hotels.  Everything in between is kind of uninspiring from a lobby experience perspective, though some luxury hotels have great service and amenities in their lobbies, sometimes they aren't as comfortable to relax in when there's almost too much service interrupting a writing or working flow.

This week I discovered great lounges inside the The Puli and The Shangri-La West Shanghai.  Even though both of these may fall into the luxury end of the spectrum, the lobby lounge service was relaxed enough for reading or working without too much disturbance until looking up and asking someone for service.  As the summer heat persists, I'll likely try even more hotel lounges and hotel breakfast offerings as a way to sample the experience inside the hotel.  As much as I enjoy our apartment, sometimes it's just better to get out.  It can also be better to focus in a hotel lobby, where the connection to the internet is either difficult, or too much of a hassle to bother with, which can help eliminate another set of internet distractions.

One unique hotel breakfast experience we ended up finding by accident was at the Bulgari Hotel.  We just wanted to relax and have a little something to drink before last week's gallery day, but there really weren't many cafes around, and based on the map, the Bulgari Hotel was basically the closest option that would likely have some coffee and food service.  So we headed up to the restaurant and ended up discovering a fantastic view of the Bund and having a fabulous breakfast for two on top of it all.  I might make a reservation in the future for the evening sunset views in cooler weather, because for that morning breakfast hour and view, it was heavenly.



Contemporary Art Galleries in Shanghai's Bund - Adventure Year Week 6

posted on: July 23, 2019

This week has me thinking a lot about creative process.  Making a commitment to do a self-motivated creative effort on a regular basis comes with a process of sorting out what that creative thing is about.  Six weeks in and I'm still figuring out how I want to use this weekly blog touch point.  I prefer this process be open and flexible, rather than fixed and confining.  After-all, it's a process of creation for me, which I just happen to be sharing publicly as I go.



As I consider this week, I think, should this just be a summary of everything you can already find on Instagram or Facebook?  That will get too repetitive if you follow me in other places.  However, I give myself grace for mostly doing that so far, because in the first month of changing places regularly and then working through jet lag recovery, that was pretty much all I could manage creating while taking in everything new as I went.

This is the first week that I'm starting to feel a little more settled into Shanghai.  Life is feeling a little more routine, and that makes it easier to think and strategize beyond what new thing needs to be explored or figured out today.  This is also the first week that I've had several days of being awake the entire day and asleep most of the night rather than half nights of sleep and afternoon naps to get through the day.  Good sleep cycles makes a big difference in the ability to strategize and create beyond observing and documenting.


I also consider the format of this blog space and how it serves others beyond myself.  Online.  Digital.  Searchable.  Archivable.  Should everything I create here be of use to other people, or should it just be record keeping for myself?  Historically, this particular blog has always been a mix of both- as flexible and multi-dimensional as I am.  As flexible as the creative process should be to allow for variations, deviations, and innovations.



Perhaps all this thinking about creative process was inspired by a visit to a few art galleries this week.  Alex mentioned that his NYU Shanghai summer class would be visiting some gallery and museum spaces downtown, and when he saw my curiosity pique, he invited me to come along.  The tour was curated by Michelle Hyun, director of NYU Shanghai's Art Gallery, in tandem with a class project designed to reimagine the gallery experience.  On a hot and humid day, I was grateful she curated a short walk between distinctly different gallery spaces, which also happened to have a lot of curatorial variety at the time of the showing.  If you find yourself near the Bund in Shanghai and want some interesting places to spend your day, definitely check out these galleries...

We started at the University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Center Gallery, which was featuring the exhibition "Growing Home: Archive of Master Architect's Own Houses (1930s-1960s)"  As someone who has an interest in architecture, it was interesting to see what perspective was recognized and what architects were included and omitted from the exhibition.


From there, we headed across the canal to the Art Plus Shanghai commercial gallery, which was featuring a group show for the summer.  I gravitated to works by Huang Yulong for the use of hoodie representation in classical sculptural form and Zhang Zhenxue for the use of organic line and shape to walk the boundary between abstract and figurative.

Crossing the line between commercial gallery and museum was the Perrotin, which would be perhaps the most challenging gallery to find if I were on my own and not being guided into the space since it resides on an upper level of the building.  I feel like it's rare to see many truly original and visceral artists in galleries, but that's how I felt about Izumi Kato's work.  It seems to refuse a level of symmetry that our mind wants in order for it to fall into the expected dimensions of classical beauty.  Yet that was what captivated me- how the figures could push and pull on our expectations and create moments of surprise and interest just by looking and lingering longer.

The grand finale of the day was RAM: Rockbund Art Museum.  An Opera for Animals Exhibit was an intense collection of works from a wide variety of artists displayed in almost dizzying density.  The intensity of color and detail from one exhibit to the next defied many museum norms of letting each art work or artist's collection breath a little in its own space.  In a sea of artists I'd never seen before, I was surprised to find the familiar Jeff Koons balloon animals so familiar to me from the windows of my New York City neighborhood.  I could easily spend much more time in this museum, and may have to take a return visit to linger quite a bit longer.

A few more adventures posted to Instagram from this week...
Discovering the rooftop lounge bar views at the Bulgari Hotel
Helping some expat friends get custom clothing and find Bassetts Ice Cream
Taking a day trip out of the city to explore the Shanghai Wonderland Intercontinental

Train Travel to Beijing and Shanghai - Adventure Year Week 5

posted on: July 16, 2019

Traveling between cities is an interesting discovery process from one country to another, or even one region to another in the same country.  For example, in the United States, it's much more convenient to take a train or bus on the North East Coast between cities that are 4 hours apart rather than dealing with airport distance and security clearance hassles that would likely take the same amount of time.  However, on the West Coast, there may not be a train or bus option between cities, so you may have to take a plane or a car.

Planes, Trains, but no Automobiles
In China, renting a car is not a possibility without a Chinese drivers license, which is different than several European countries honoring a United States drivers license.  For foreigners in China, the options are hiring a private driver, taking a bus, taking a train, or taking a plane.  Trip.com has options to book train and plane travel across China with an English interface and a foreign credit card.  It is possible to take busses, and they are the most affordable option, and in some cases the only option to smaller cities, but they are also often the least comfortable.

Time & Cost Differences
The trip to Beijing from Shanghai is 2.5 hours by plane, and tickets can be found a few days in advance for $80 - $160 USD for coach class.  The issue with air travel is of course the time getting to and from the airport from inside the city as well as arriving early to make sure you've cleared security and line waiting times.  By train, the trip to Beijing from Shanghai is about 4-6 hours on the high speed train for about $80-$160, or half that price for the slow train which takes 12 hours or more, and is often run as an overnight sleeper train with shared cabins.  For all these reasons, the fast train is a highly desirable option for travelers going between the two cities.




Passport Necessary
All travel between cities on public transport requires a passport.  Most first time travelers to China have the easiest experience by booking a tour package which includes a tour guide or escort to quickly and easily help navigate public transport options.  However, if you're coming to China to teach English, and want a little more independence on your days off, your school may hold your passport (I've heard this happens at some schools), and you would need to make sure you have your passport in hand when booking and traveling.  Even if you book your ticket online, you'll still need your passport to redeem a printed ticket at the station when you arrive.

Train Stations
The train stations have a basic and fast moving airport-level security before entering the station.  Arriving 30min early should be enough time to get through the line, get your ticket from a booth agent, and make it to the train, but sometimes the ticket agents move slowly.  Arriving earlier means more time to explore the station offerings itself.  The train stations in Beijing and Shanghai have plenty of waiting area and seating, fast food options, restrooms, and convenience stores to browse.  This year I noticed that they installed some drinking water stations that I don't remember being there last year, which should help more travelers reduce water bottle waste.  (Almost everyone in China travels with their own bottle that holds water or hot tea.)  Gates are numbered with an A side and B side for boarding.  Each train has train cars listed by number, and seat rows listed by number with seats listed by alphabetical character- just as you'd find on a plane.

Train Seats
First class seats offer a little more room and privacy, but the most luxurious seats are the business class seats which offer a much roomier and more comfortable train seat experience at 3x the price of a regular ticket or 2x the price of a first class ticket.  Our coach seats were booked online a few days in advance and people may have still been buying any seats that were exchanged at the last minute because the train left the station completely full.  I say that to expect every seat to be full.  We didn't end up with seats next to each other on our first ride into Beijing, but were able to get seats together on our ride out of Beijing back to Shanghai.  I'm sure a single traveler may have been willing to swap seats with one of us so we could sit together, but we were only a couple rows away from each other and didn't mind.  The booking system gives you a mild preference for seats, but doesn't guarantee seats together.  In the future, I may express preference for the two seat side of the train rather than the three seat side of the train, so that the two of us can feel like we have our own little row together, which would likely be more comfortable for our midwestern bodies than sharing a middle seat with our long arms and elbows.  If you have four people together, you can actually turn one set of seats around on many trains and face each other if you're in the row directly behind each other.

Train Amenities
Each train car has one or two bathrooms and a washing sink - our train cars had a regular toilet and a squat toilet.  I imagine that future generations will only have European style toilets, as the squat toilets are becoming increasingly rare.  There's a drinking water station with hot water for refilling tea bottles, and there are usually some cups there as well which eventually run out during the ride.  All drinks and food offered in coach are an additional fee, but they do offer some hot prepared meals with meat, rice, and veggies, as well as instant noodles or ramen that you add hot water too.  They also offer plenty of juices, waters, sodas, and dry good snacks.  At one point an attendant went through selling toy trains that light up and make noise.  You can either catch an attendant as they go by, or head to the dining car listed on the pamphlet in your seat back pocket.

Differences Between Beijing & Shanghai
Beijing is a much more conservative and traditional city that seeks to preserve its antiquities and unique heritage of China's long past.  This is reflected in the buildings, the hutong districts, the museums, the performances, the antique markets, and more traditional mentalities in the city.  Whereas, Shanghai is cutting edge modern to the point that there's little to no room for history to survive, unless it appeals to modern aesthetic and taste.  It seeks to be nearly the opposite of Beijing, as it's more liberal about combining cultural influences, open to the world at large, and always working toward a better, faster, more luxurious and fashionable lifestyle.  If you have significant time in either of these cities, a vision of China would be limited without visiting both cities to see how different they can be.

Since I've shared a few posts from Shanghai so far, here's a small glimpse into some of Beijing - both old and new:





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