Days 1 and 2 in China

Day 1:

I woke up early on my first day because of jet lag and headed out to Nanjing road, which is the main commercial road in Shanghai, with the upscale department stores and shops. Just off of Nanjing road is renmin gong yuan (renmin park), which is really nice and has some lily ponds and walkways. Older Chinese people were out early in the morning doing exercises and taichi in groups. In the park is the Shanghai Museum, which is regarded as the best museum in China. It's four stories and has exhibits on Chinese currency, calligraphy, ceramics and jade carving. After the museum I walked to this area in the French Concession called Xin Tian Di, which is a newly built complex of shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and businesses. In the middle of this area is the site of the 1st National Congress of the CCP. In 1921 at this building, which is now a museum but still has the room intact where the leaders met, the communist party was formed in China and their charter was written. Upstairs there are old copies of Chinese translations of Marx and artifacts having to do with the Chinese communist party. I then went to the Ohel Moishe Synagogue, which was built in 1927 by the Russian Ashkenazi Jewish community. The Synagogue was recently restored and has exhibits behind it that detail how Shanghai took in Jews during WWII and helped them escape persecution. In the 1940s the area surrounding the synagogue became a Jewish ghetto as the Japanese forced most of Shanghai's 30,000 Jews into this area. Among those who escaped to Shanghai during WWII was Michael Blumenthal, who came from Berlin, and emigrated to the U.S. after the War. Blumenthal later became the Secretary of the Treasury under Jimmy Carter.

The Shanghai Museum, modeled after a ding vessel

Some of the oldest Chinese paper currency

What Chinese currency looked like before coins or paper

currency (pretty bulky)

Chinese calligraphy in a script style

One of the first copies of a Chinese translation of Marx

The site of the 1st National Congress of the CCP

My first sighting of golf in China - I don't know how these

figurines fit in with this vendor's other items

The exterior of the Ohel Moishe Synagogue

Day 2:

I started my second day by going back to Xin Tian Di for dim sum at Crystal Jade, a famous Shanghainese dim sum restaurant. After that I walked to the Bund, probably Shanghai's most famous site. The Bund is where all of the old commerce and hotels were, and it faces Pudong, the area where all of the commerce takes place now, and housing some of the tallest buildings in t he world. I started at the south end of the Bund, at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, probably the most fmaous building on the bund. It was opened in 1923 and is pretty extravagant. From there is the Customs House, which was built in 1927 and has famous clock tower on top of it, which chimed until it was stopped during the Cultural Revolution and replaced with propaganda broadasts (it chimes now though). I ended at the Pujiang Hotel, now the Astor House Hotel, which is Shanghai's first hotel. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard and the sky was completely overcast so none of the tops of buildings on the Pudong side were visible. I had some time to kill until dinner time, so I went back to Xin Tian Di and visited the Shikumen Open House, which is a restored old Shikumen house, the type of house that people in Shanghai lived in before all of this development. The homes have a huge stone entryway framing black doors (which is how it gets its Chinese name). The homes are linked by a courtyard and a shop that sold basic items, which is where the families interacted.

Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank

Customs House

Pujiang Hotel

I then went to dinner at a place called Tenya. I e-mailed Greg asking for suggestions of places to eat in Shanghai and he said, in all caps, that I had to go to Tenya. I showed the address to the cab driver, he dropped me off on a street and I couldn't see any restaurants. I walked into an alleyway and the restaurant was there. It was definitely a place you had to be looking for to actually find. This place only serves toro tuna, the fattiest part of the tuna. As the Tenya website says, "only 3% of the tuna caught in the world can make the best toro. Only 2 species of tuna, Bluefin and Southern Bluefin, are able to make good toro. Only 20% part of this special tuna can be called toro." I love tuna and this place was amazing. I ordered the toro sushi five ways - fatty toro, medium fat toro, marinated toro, grilled toro and toro handroll. Greg said it was the best sushi he's ever had and I'd agree. Tenya now has 5 locations and one is opening up in Beijing, but this location was the original, with only 34 seats.

The five types of sushi at Tenya

The sky cleared up at around 5:00PM today and it was finally nice outside. Hopefully this carries over to tomorrow, when I play my first round of golf.