06.28.09 First days of Shanghai
Shanghai was a mixed bag in terms of favorite places I’ve been to. It’s a giant city – second largest in the world – but once you get past the surface, which looks like a culturally vibrant and crazy place, it’s really all about business. The arts scene was highly commercial, in a bad way, though it did have its gems. I’ll get to that even more in a later post. Architecturally though, it’s far and ahead one of the more interesting, in China and worldwide. The World Expo (aka World’s Fair) is being held there next year, so a lot of construction is going on to get these ridiculous projects built. What I also liked was in the mornings, people would be out and about right outside the hotel doing tai-chi and dance aerobics, even playing badminton. There was a pedestrian only boulevard / plaza in front of the hotel where all this took place.
That would be the boulevard. Behind me was where all the morning activities would go on.
Specifically, this is what was behind me.
Visited a museum of Chinese artifacts – this is outside of it. At this point in the trip, I was tired of museums – I would have much preferred to actually be out and seeing the sites.
The expo center, where we went to next.
They had this giant model of the entire city taking up most of the floor. I’d say close to 1000 square feet if not more.
A modern arts museum. This piece I quite liked – apocalypse hits the Chinese cities.
This is the start of the second day – we went to a temple. The light was bland and overcast – I don’t think we had seen the sun for 4 or 5 days at this point. It’s supposedly the rainy season, but I’m pretty sure it was also just smog galore.
Hey, that’s me . . .
A scuplture park. I have no idea why Albert was there.
Get it? See, it’s Rodin’s “Thinker,” but fat! Clever, huh?
Everyone’s a photographer. Actually, I saw lots of photogs whenever we were in these sorts of areas. Wedding shoots, fashion shoots, what have you.
Mix of the 20-35, 50 1.4, and 85 1.4.
