Ello! It’sa me again, Timo! So, in this week’s adventure series, we have a trip to Shanghai and pretty much covers my whole week and blog post, so sit tight. (Attempts to load intro music, error 404 – music not found ): )
Shanghai. The heart of China’s technological advances. Its rich culture and artistry all stowed in modernised museums. Not forgetting its delectable mini basket buns(小笼包) and fried packaged buns(生煎包). Haaa… What’s not to like about Shanghai. So, let us begin from the beginning, the train ride. Oh hell no, the train ride was not what I enjoyed. It was packed, crammed and seats were not guaranteed for some of us, and smoking was allowed. The whole ride took 2 hours if I recalled correctly. It’s not the first time I took a train like that, and I’m honestly just over exaggerating the entire ride’s experience. Here’s how it simply is, it was slightly uncomfortable for me in the space the train provides, but other than that it was honestly not that bad. People were shouting across for sales of small snacks, everyone just minding their own business and mostly napping or on their smart devices.
Once we arrived at Shanghai, we wandered through a street that looks like any boulevard down orchard road. It has rows of recognizable shops, huge street signs and giant LED screens stretching across this street. Right after dinner we head down to the end of the boulevard only to witness the amazing sight of Shanghai city right by The Bund or Waitan(外滩), which is where Shanghai got their name from. Even though Shanghai has been such a modernized city, it also has its hints of its history in all its architecture. European architecture stretched along the Bund, which according to wikipeadia (your sincerely trusted source of information), was built in the early 19th century. These buildings were built from after the British settlement in China. The Bund was a port for the British settlements. Once the pavements were reinforced, there sprung manifolds of financial buildings, resulting with the Bund becoming a major financial hub in the east of Asia. This was prominent even today, especially when we traveled through the Bund, where the European architecture is prevalent in the landscape of the Bund.
(I sadly lost my SD card for Shanghai pictures, and only have one day’s worth of pictures, JK I have pictures from a later time)
So, we stayed approximately 3 days there. Having a lot of us there, we split into 2 different groups. Some of us ventured off into eating and eating — dwelling in the abundance of salivating food stocked up in Shanghai. However, for me I had something else in mind, and it’s not the most culturally nor enriching experience (or so you and I think). I wanted to go to the arcade. (hehe…) I’m a definite fanatic for one of the Japanese music-rhythm arcade game called MaiMai. Essentially, just a machine that looks like a front doored washing machine (legit, inspired by the washing machine, not coincidentally have a song called coin laundry disco, lmao) with 8 buttons evenly spaced around its front circumference.
The machines there were hacked though and had every song unlocked. There was surprisingly a prevalent arcade culture in Shanghai, almost each player there knew one another. Not to mention, every other machine in the arcade, particularly this other music-rhythm based game, also had people flocking over the machine. I’m not too sure how much similar it is to Singapore’s arcade culture, but according to a friend, it is also small but strong culture. The prices for the games weren’t too shabby. If I could recall correctly, approximately around $1 SGD for a game of 3 songs. So, I could see why going to the arcade is an alright hobby to play in Shanghai, which similarly in Singapore it’s about $1.50 per game of 4 songs.
On the last day we stayed in Shanghai, we stayed over in a KTV, wasn’t the brightest of ideas but it came at a decent price (cause college student problems). We stayed over and for some sad reason the KTV kicked us out earlier than out promised timing. This set us about 4 hours ahead of our day’s schedule, and we didn’t know where to head off. We thought through about what we wish to do and, in the end, decided to head off for an early breakfast, and firstly, we had to travel through the streets of Shanghai. With the weather being close to post-spring and pre-summer, it was being a little unforgiving towards for my Singaporean fashion sense of bermudas and shirt. It gave me frost bites, and I was chilled to the bones, not literally but legit it was really really cold, and I was dying walking through the streets. Once we arrived at the breakfast place, I was so darn relieved that it was a little warmer, but still I sat by the door for I don’t know what reason. Anyway, what got me excited was the place was serving beancurd, you tiao and soymilk.
(SD card lost, haz no pictures of fud. ): )
Shall carry this post to another page as it is really long. Haha! But thanks for reading episode 1 of Shanghai! Next time on Shanghai adventures… *Flashes scene of food after food* Yea! Food adventures! Yes! See you there, which is here.
