Once again I had a case of the blog delays - it's a nasty condition, i wouldn't recommend it. You end up with a big pile of work to catch up with at the end of it...

Now, depite the fact that Shanghai was well over a month ago, I still feel the need to write a blog for each place we all went to during spring festival before talking about what's going on in Kuitun again (which I should add, hasn't been short of events). The Shanghai, Suzhou and Guilin blogs will be a little shorter however. Partly so i can write them quickly, and partly because I can't remember the travelling as well as I could when I actually was still on the road...or train track as the case may be in China.

Shanghai was a blessing after the siberian cold of Haerbin. As soon as we left our plane (Haerbin to Shanghai was our only flight - we were concerned about not being able to get train tickets that close to the new year) and were instantly dumbfounded. Outside, from the airport windows we saw the impossible. Grass. There were even trees with leaves on them...

Some things are just too strange. Seeing grass after a few months of only snow - up to the day before - is a magical experience it turns out.

Another (literal) plus was the temperature. Finally we had reached a place that was rather warm. Shanghai reached around 20 degrees on some days. In february! Of course, the sheer size of the city added a few degrees, as we found out when we visited Suzhou later. Suzhou is very nearby, and yet was considerably cooler than Shanghai.

As for what we got up to in Shanghai, I will be brutally honest. It wasn't as much a cultural affair, as a meet-up-and-party affair. This was the first opportunity that all of us China volunteers had been together in one place since we arrived in Beijing 6 months before. We just wanted to hang out and have fun rather than see things. Nevertheless, we did see the city and experience some of the tourist-y bits and pieces, but there was a definite bias towards going out the clubs.

Let's start with the sightseeing, shall we?

As a group we did see a large chunk of this monstrously large city. Highlights definitely included the business district (Pudong), the 'Old' Town around Yuyuan Gardens and the French Concession.

There isn't much to do as such in the Business district, but the atmosphere is wonderfully impressive. You are surrounded by some of the world's tallest buildings and everything is spotlessly shiny. In places it feels positively space age. Naturally Apple, with the horrifically good marketing only managed to get the best location in the entire business district, so if you flick through the spring festival photo album you should come across an Apple shop that could well be a landing station of spaceships in it's spare time. This particular 'square' (it's more of a circle) has an amazing view of the pearl tower in one direction and the former world's second tallest building in the other direction. Right behind is a building in progress that's already taller than the former second tallest. The business district is, quite frankly, very tall.

The old town and yuyuan Gardens have a more traditional feel to the rest of Shanghai. I have to say 'traditional feel' because the Old Town probably isn't very old at all. plenty of things destroyed by the Cultural revolution have been hastily rebuilt after people realised how stupid it was to destroy cultural relics and architecture. Sorry China, but destroying those classical buildings and replacing them with concrete monsters of buildings was a seriously bad idea. Any way, back to the point. Despite the area probably not being as old as the tourist guides will claim, it is a very beautiful part of town. Everywhere you look has sweeping pagodas and intricate Chinese lanterns hanging between roofs. The downside is that they know that tourists go there and hence there are tourist traps everywhere. We had one fellow come up to us trying to offer us one of the infamous guides to somewhere that usually end up in a crazy service charge. The gardens themselves were beautiful, but unfortunately the photos have ended up getting mixed up with the equally attractive gardens in Suzhou due to very annoying photo arrangements courtesy of the offexploring website.

The French concession is hard to write about in much detail because it is simply a slightly french-ed up part of town. I liked it mainly for the numerous coffee shops, although it didn't beat my favourite coffee street in Beijing. It was a very expensive area, and so if you stood on any major road for more than 5 minutes, a super car would roll by. Porches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Astons, the works all went past on one particular road. Some of the locals seem to be rather rich.

As we would find out on our nights out...

Now, we would have wasted horrific amounts of money in Shanghai if we weren't so lucky as to meet a guy who knew all the club promoters, as we may have gone to many of the most exclusive clubs in the city. For free. In Shanghai, the clubs seem to think that westerners are fancy, so promoters are on the look out for big groups of westerners to let in for free. It's a strange system, but it did us a big favour. The first club we went to was on the world famous Bund, looking over the most famous view in Shanghai, possibly in China - the waterfront of Pudong. It's rare that the highlight of going out is looking out the window, but that was exactly the case at this amazing place.

We got into a few other places for free, but the best place was no doubt where we went for Chinese new year. There were apparently no scheduled fireworks, or major celebration anywhere in Shanghai this year (if there were, they were not advertised well), so we just looked for the most hopeful sounding night out. And we certainly found it. We spent Chinese New Year in a mansion with a club in the basement. How cool is that? Admittedly, this party was not free but it wasn't expensive either. The party was meant to go on until 7 in the morning but we all left early - some stayed later than others. I lasted until 4 before I head off with about 5 of the guys.

Apologies to PT for talking about nights out so much, but it was Near year - it was going to happen!

I would say that's enough for Shanghai. With a bit of luck I'll get Suzhou and Guilin up by the end of today. I however have work in a little while, so there shall be a short break between now and writing.

Thanks for reading!