Our World Trip: Shanghai

At first sight you could have been sailing The Humber – the colour was instantly recognisable - but suddenly ships of all sizes were whizzing by so close you could almost touch them! No wonder this is said to be the busiest port in the World. QM2 needed high tide to clear the mud and had just 2m below the keel in the last part of the channel and the tugs fussed around as we made a 180 at the end of an inbound convoy of ships to moor starboard side to the dock, dodging outbound ships on all sides. The immense container terminal with dozens of gantry cranes stretched astern and two vehicle transporters were loading and unloading cars and buses ahead. Shorewards a huge overhead power catenary system powered the electric container shuttles – thousands of containers as far as the eye could see through the smog!

Pudong has changed so much since we were here in 2005 that we hardly recognised it – new skyscrapers and apartment blocks everywhere – apparently there are over 3,000 buildings with more than 25 floors in this city of 18million people. Crossing the river on one of the many new cable-stayed bridges we made for the Old Town and its hawkers - another tale to tell at home! Our tour included a visit to the Old Town and Yu Yuan garden plus a Chinese dinner and tour of the City by night, so we started in the garden. The early cherry blossoms were just starting in this sheltered spot and we enjoyed a look round this amazing garden with its zig-zag bridges ( the demons won’t go in anything other than a straight line, so the bridges stop them following you!) Sacred carp featured in the ponds once more and the conservationists would have had a fit to see Ming Dynasty furniture in the open air of the Merchant’s study.

We aimed to get a Chinese tea set over here and had great fun in the Old Town Government shop dealing with Assistant No. 6 to choose the patterns and the tea itself before heading out to the restaurant for an excellent Chinese dinner. In the gathering darkness we crossed the tunnel to Pudong again for a trip up the Oriental Pearl TV Tower to its observation deck, 250m above the ground. Only pictures can describe the lights of Shanghai, so there are few on this blog! Suffice to say that wherever you look there are more and more outrageous illuminated buildings.

Descending the lift and gathering the troops eventually, our Guide showed us round the Museum beneath the Tower which traced the history of Shanghai through the last 200 years in the style of York’s Jorvic and Castle Museums with lots of little cameos.

Even Lewis Hamilton – himself an intrepid driver – has noted the aggressive driving style in Shanghai and our bus driver did a fair imitation of a dodgem to get us back to the ship in heavy traffic, even at 9 pm! Back aboard we reflected on another astonishing Asian city making headlong progress to who knows where whilst a container ship took the place of QM2 the instant we left the berth – a novel sort of hot bunking!