Thursday, April 25, 2013

Shànghǎi: Huángpǔ River Cruise

12th April 2013.

We took a 45 minute cruise on the busy Huángpǔ River downstream on the Pǔdōng (eastern) side, then back upstream on the Pǔxī (western) side.

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Lùjiāzuǐ, the area facing the Bund on the Pǔdōng side of the Huángpǔ, is a dazzlingly modern highrise counterpoint to the austere, old-world structures on the Bund (Lonely Planet).
Long, low barges carry goods up and down the river.

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Pǔdōng is a more recent invention and is the location of the financial district and the famous Shànghǎi skyline (Lonely Planet).

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China, of course, is the golden centre of the world.

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The Oriental Pearl TV Tower looks rather splendid from the water.

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The building that looks like a bottle opener is the 492 metre high Shànghǎi World Financial Centre.   While it has never been the world’s tallest building, it does lay claim to the world’s highest
observation deck.
Apparently, you can buy bottle openers in the shape of the building inside.

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90 degree angles don’t appear to be important for buildings any more.

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Now we have turned around and are coming back.  On the Pǔxī side of the river, classical buildings were decorated with non-classical murals.

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The job of the man at the front of this boat was to fish bits of rubbish out of the river with a net.  We were very impressed by the cleanliness of Shànghǎi (and the number of people who were kept employed keeping it that way).

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Shànghǎi has some very striking and unusual bridges.

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More murals on the Pǔxī side of the river, and here you can also see some of Shànghǎ’s many beautiful flowering trees.

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The building with the green tower is the famous Peace Hotel, which opened in 1929 as the most luxurious hotel in the Far East, when it was known as the Cathay.  After three years of renovations, it has just reopened in all its original art deco glory.  We later had lunch in the bistro there.
To the right of the Peace Hotel is the Bank of China building. Director HH Kung commissioned it in 1936, with specific instructions that it should be higher than the adjacent Cathay Hotel. The building is an unusual mixture of styles, and the top was eventually changed to a blue Chinese roof.  Ironically, this caused it to end up being one metre shorter than its neighbour.

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The “funky art deco lions” (Lonely Planet) sitting in front of the Bank of China building.

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The beautiful retro foyer of the Peace Hotel where we had lunch in the bistro, and watched the throngs of mainly Chinese tourists passing by.
When we returned to our hotel, we found our luggage had finally arrived, only three days late.  I think the staff were as pleased as we were, as now we would finally stop bugging them about it.

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