Breakfast on my final day in Shanghai was another depressing experience. A few minutes after I finished the meal I started feeling a little strange, and by the time I checked out of the hotel I had a full on stomach ache and was feeling very weak. I hoped it was just the nasty breakfast passing through my system and that I wasn't coming down with something.

My train for Beijing left at about 7:00pm, so I still had pretty much the whole day to do something with. I decided to take it easy and do something that didn't require much effort - visit the Shanghai museum. I don't mind the occasional visit to a museum, but generally when I'm travelling I prefer to be out and about, instead of wandering round inside a building. However, on this day a museum trip seemed like a perfect idea for my ailing body.

I didn't want to carry my backpack around so I caught the subway to Shanghai station and checked it in to the left baggage office (using some very rudimentary Chinese and a lot of sign language). Then I caught the subway back to the museum, which is located in People's Square. The museum was neither huge nor small, and it had a variety of exhibits including calligraphy, coins, personal stamps, pottery, metalwork, clothing, furniture and an exhibition of Ducth artwork on loan from somewhere. The museum was quiet, warm and there were relatively few people there. It was a very relaxing place to wander around. It was so relaxing that one of the guards fell asleep and slipped off his chair while I was walking past. He was pretty embarrassed. I spent a few hours walking though the museum, which included a fair amount of time relaxing on their comfy sofas.

The musueum.

A kid riding his tractor in front of the museum.


Ink paintings. I don't really have much interest in art, but for some reason I like this kind of painting.


Dark, warm and a great place for a nap.


Calligraphy.


Outside the museum.


Shanghai skyline.


Shanghai traffic.


After the museum, I spent an hour or so wandering through the shopping centres around People's Park before deciding to head out of the centre of the city. I took a subway in the direction of Shanghai station, picked a random station to get off at and then spent much of the rest of the afternoon wandering around that area. There was nothing of particular interest in that part of town, it was just a residential area. However, it was eye opening to see the way that rich people in high rise buildings living side-by-side with very poor people in slums.

This picture was taken while I was walking across a bridge. On the left of the bridge (out of picture) there are clean, classy apartment compounds with private parks and lakes. On the right there are dirty, smelly ramshackle buildings. People seem to be surviving, but it can't be a very good life in a place like this. There were people cooking cheap food (30 cents for a bowl of noodles, including free servings of sliced onions, bamboo shoots and Hepatitis), people selling old, rusty pots and pans, people giving haircuts (less than a dollar, shampoo extra), people mending clothes etc. Everyone was making a living the best way they could.


At around 4:00pm I'd finally had enough of Shanghai so I headed to the station. I caught the subway there and ended up at the North Entrance, where the long distance buses leave from. However, my bags were in the office at the South Entrance, so I wandered around trying to find a passage from the north to the south. For some reason I couldn't find a passage from the north the south. I don't know whether it was just well hidden, or whether there really wasn't a passage. The only way through was for people who had a ticket (and I wasn't ready to use my ticket yet). So, I had to walk all the way around the station just to get from north to south. This may not seem so bad, but the station was HUGE. It took about half an hour just to walk around it. By the time I got to the south side I was exhausted. When I arrived at the south entrance I had plenty of time to spare, so I decided to go check out some of the dodgy looking shopping centres that surround the south plaza. While I was wandering around I noticed a sign saying 'Shanghai Foreign Bookshop' in English, and I decided that it would be a great idea to get a book to read on the train. I spent about 20 frustrating minutes walking all the way around the outside of the shopping center almost three times before I finally found the bookshop. It was actually just the back room of a small convenience store. Surprisingly, they had a few bookcases full of mostly English books. There was a mix of new and used books, and they were fairly cheap. Although there wasn't much to choose from, it was way more than I expected from a bookstore in Shanghai. I ended up picking up a cheap copy of Jack London's 'The Sea Wolf', an adventurous tale about a young man stranded in a dangerous and exotic environment. It seemed appropriate for my trip.

I still had about 2 hours before the train departed, so I picked up some dinner and breakfast supplies (I wasn't sure what the food situation would be on the train), picked up my backpack and went off to look for a comfortable place to sit among the hundreds of people waiting in the cold, dark plaza in front of the station. However, as I walked past the front of the station I noticed a sign saying 'soft ticket waiting area'. Realising I actually had a 'soft' ticket, I walked through the soft entrance, had my ticket checked, had my bags x-rayed and found myself in heaven. It was a large waiting area filled with huge, comfortable leather sofas, a bar, a restaurant and even a piano (but nobody was playing it). Best of all, it was warm and quiet. There were few people there, so I helped myself to a sofa in the corner and sat down to relax. There are about six evening sleeper trains from Shanghai to Beijing every day, and five of them leave between 7:00pm and about 7:30pm. So, as it approached 7:00 the room started to fill up with passengers (mostly Russians for some reason), but I was lucky enough to have my corner to myself. By now I was tired, my stomach was still a little funny, and I was a little sick of Shanghai. I was tired of the constant crowds, the constant noise, the constant pushing and general rudeness of the people. I was also a little disappointed that there weren't more historical things to see in Shanghai. I was really looking forward to seeing 'ancient China', but there is very little of that in Shanghai. It is mostly office buildings, shopping centres and boutiques. This is fine sometimes, but it wasn't really what I wanted to see this time.

Anyway, at round 7:00pm I boarded the train and left for Beijing. The train was much newer and cleaner than the previous one.




I was in a clean and 'soft' cabin with three other people, a young guy, a woman my age and an older guy. I spent quite a while up on my bunk reading before the girl asked my something in English. It turned out she spoke English really well, so I stopped reading and chatted with the others. They were all very friendly, and it was nice to chat with them. They had lots of questions about where I was going and where I'd been. Sometime during the evening I wandered off in search of the dining car. I found it empty, except for a Chinese guy sleeping in one booth and some train conductors having a little party in another. I decided to get some dinner and ordered a beef dish with rice. Amazingly, even though it was train food it was cheap and delicious and it really hit the spot. I started to get sleepy so I headed back to my bunk. I read a little more then turned off my light. Before I fell asleep I was invited to play cards with the older guy (who seemed to have taken an unusual liking to me), but I was too exhausted so I had to decline. I fell asleep looking forward to seeing Beijing and not having to eat a crappy hotel breakfast.

Sometime around 6:00am the conductor came to wake everyone up. The train was due to arrive in Beijing around 6:45am, which was much earlier than I had expected. When it arrived, I said goodbye to my new friends, left the station and found myself in another wide open plaza. It was still dark and it was colder than Shanghai. Looking around I couldn't see that much but for some reason I just knew that I would enjoy Beijing more than Shanghai. I guess first impressions are very important. My first impression of Shanghai was a dirty plaza filled with noisy, pushy Shanghai people. My first impression of Beijing was a clean plaza, crisp air, much fewer people, a city just waking up and full of potential. I felt renewed.



I strapped on my pack and headed off in the direction of my hotel. It was at least a few kilometres away, but I felt like a good walk. The next hour or so was amazing. Beijing and Shanghai are both in China, but they are very different cities. It was amazing walking around watching the city wake up. Everything in Bejing is on a huge scale. City blocks are huge. Streets are huge. Major roads are usually have about 5 or 6 lanes in each direction. They are so wide that there are no pedestrian crossings (it would take too long to cross). You have to walk through tunnels under the road. The buildings are also big, but actually they are more wide than high. Compared to Shanghai, there are very few tall buildings.

The best part about walking around that morning was that there were very few people around. It almost seemed like I had the city to myself.




After an hour or so walking I found myself in one of the main commercial areas in Beijing, a pedestrian only mall called Wangfujing Road. By now I was having Wang problems of my own. I was dying to go to the toilet, nothing was open and I couldn't find a public toilet. I spent about 20 minutes in utter agony before I finally stumbled across a public toilet down a side street. After doing my business I walked out, pulled out a map and started to look around for a landmark that would help me find out where I was, thus helping me to find the way to my hotel. In one of those incredible coincidences, as I was looking around I realised that I was actually standing 10 metres away from my hotel, which was located next to the public toilet I had just used. Hmm... things were looking good for the Beijing leg of my trip.