New Shanghai Shopping City

"New Shanghai Shopping City is built on a grand scale and offers the best facilities and amenities. Located in the middle of Pudong Lujiazui Finance and Trade Area, it is surrounded by a variety of retail outlets." - chinaodysseytours.com

Despite lastnight's misadventure of baggage delay, we were once again up and about upon hearing that we are going shopping! New Shanghai Shopping City is huge! Indeed there was no ounce of lie in the statement made by China Odyssey Tours there. Built of ancient Chinese architecture with the sweeping multi-inclined garbled roof, they covered the tops of the many storeys shopping buildings. The height and the scale of these buildings gave the shopping city a sense of grandeur. As I looked at these buildings and how crowded with people the place was, I kinda wish we were all dressed in traditional Chinese clothes to match these buildings and be taken into a scene of the olden days of China.

We had only an hour to spare. On second thought, we decided to try the restaurant famous for its dumplings, just right outside our meeting point instead of venturing around. I was also broke at that point since I've spent all my yuans and wasn't looking forward to using my credit card as a resort. After the high tea, we walked around the nearby shopping buildings before turning back to the meeting point.


Walking towards New Shanghai Shopping City from a nearby street


Heading towards the main square in the shopping area


It started raining and shoppers were running for shelter


Shoppers with umbrella heading towards the building famous for its dumplings


A nice pond where many tourists were taking pictures of


View from one of the floors


Waiting for our orders in the restaurant


We ordered a set of 6 with different fillings; sharkfin and crab, chicken and mushroom, and prawn. It was delicious. One has to be careful eating the dumpling when it is fresh from the kitchen. It may have cooled but the broth contained inside the dough with the filling is still piping hot! So yummy with Chinese tea.


Cooks making the dumplings


People with places to go


Adorable old man with purple Crocs


Mother and her baby

Busy City of Shanghai

Shanghai is one big busy city. High rise building sprouted everywhere towards the gloomy, grey sky through the foggy atmosphere. Vehicles are streaming from a street to another. Pedestrians are at just every street and junction, and cops are busy bringing order to the traffic. It's all jumbled up, the modern posh buildings with the more modest-looking shophouses. Nevertheless, it was interesting to watch like looking at fishes in the aquarium.


High rise buildings and lower apartment buildings


Modern buildings banked the roadsides and looking like another city; New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo?


A pedestrian crossing


A man hanging laundry at the clothes line


Some roadworks


Telephone cables and maybe electric ones too all tangled together, just as I have seen in Ho Chi Minh


More construction work


I love alley shots! There's always something less urban and more real about an alley. So, here's one.


And here's another one


Policeman ushering traffic

Silk factory and store, Shanghai

What I love about the tour was that the guide was flexible. Our entire itinerary was changed as we all had a late night sleep with our baggage delayed. We woke up at about ten, if I am not wrong and was then back on the road at about 11am.

Our first stop was a visit to the silk factory. The places we visited; the pharmaceuticals, souvenier stores, yak beef jerky store, even this silk factory, there were all so commercialised. Everything was well-planned to the likes of the tourist, it just kinda seemed artificial to me. I was immediately thrown into the skepticism of this whole marketing ploy by the end of the tour around the factory because of all these very nice displays and their flow. As we walked into the lobby of the factory, we were ushered into their museum where there were displays of silkworms in jars, silk dresses (for both men and women) that dated from the many dynasties back, the route of silk trade all throughout the world, some traditional weaving machine and there was some workers working on the modern weaving machine, and finally, we see how the silk is stretched to form layers that become our duvet. And well, well, well, what do you know. By the end of our tour, there is the store, and they have specially stacked into a nice pile of their duvets, the ones with the lowest tog, well-suited to the Singaporean climate. These were all in the bedroom section where pillows, cushions, sheets, etc were sold. At the back of this was a door leading us to the clothes section, which then lead us to the art pieces section. I am so in love with these silk embroidery paintings. Instead of being painted or drawn, these ones were being sewn! They were so beautiful and they looked like hand-painted paintings. I am so impressed! I bought a smaller one costing about 680RMB of the hustle and bustle of an ancient Chinese city.


Silk worms


Poster showing the lifecycle of silkworms


Traditional weaving machine


Traditional weaving machine - close-up


Modern weaving machine


Pulling the lump of silk to form layers of a duvet


Extracting silk from the silk worm


These are used to make pillows and cushions


It apparently does not catch fire easily as our guide was doing a demonstration to prove this claim


Beautiful silk embroidery paintings with poems and Chinese sceneries. I really like this one! It cost about 26,000RMB if I remember correctly. 0_o


I have always love horse paintings and have yet to find one which I really like and can afford. This one was also costing many thousand RMBs! It's looks exactly like a hand-painted painting. Sewn painting is truly an amazing art!


Look at the detail of this one! And, there's shading and different tones on these shades to give it the texture and feel. This is such a romantic painting and it's truly beautiful.

Leaving Lhasa for Shanghai - Luggage issue

It took us about an hour or so to get from the city centre to Lhasa Gonggar Airport by coach. The airport looks new and is quite big, though comparatively much tinier than giants like Changi or Suvarnabhumi. Checking in had been crazy as we learned that two of our tour group members were not allowed for check-in due to the temperature in Lhasa. At a certain temperature (it was a fairly warm day) at high altitudes, planes are to restrict the number of passengers and baggage. I am not exactly sure the details of this but it is one that concerns safety. We learned this later at Shanghai-Pudong airport that our bags were left back at Lhasa airport. It was a tiring night after 2 flights from Lhasa to Xian (famous for its terracotta soldiers!) and then to Shanghai. We were stuck at the Shanghai Pudong airport for several hours to get our baggage sorted and the staff were not very pleasant or helpful. Little did I realise that this later on has appeared to be a divine intervention for me when I had my travel insurance claim processed. I was so broke and had needed the money to purchase new tyres since the old ones have been used for two years and the treads were completely gone! Alleluia!

At the hotel, we were too exhausted to worry about not having fresh change of clothes. We hurriedly showered and went to bed right after. The time then was three in the morning.


View of the mountains from glass walls of Lhasa airport


A tribal painting at the Lhasa airport


Mountains above the clouds


Big fields from the plane as it was about to land in Shanghai

Tibetan Dance Performance 3

Act 4 of Tibet's Thangka dance and song, "Happiness is on the way", is about the Fire element, the dream of happiness (identifying happiness)



Dance about monks


Dance depicting the fight between good and evil




Many dancers in monk attire and headgear


Celestial dancers


I like the purple smoke which made the stage looked like a dream

Act 5, the sky features the relationship between heaven and man (creating happiness)

A dance with traditional drums

The performance ended with a blessing to the audience and the dancers perform a dance of katak (Tibetan white scarf) presentation.