7/16/06 ~ From Bund to Buddha

On the Rio: Led Zeppelin ~ Communication Breakdown (Live, Paris Theatre, London, April 1, 1971) in honor of Newt's voice message, in which I would never have known Zeppelin was playing in the background if he hadn't said so. Keep those late night calls coming!

I didn't make it to the boat cruise. I took the metro in the wrong direction and I ended up being 10 minutes late to catch the ferry. So I took pictures of Pudong, where I took the tunnel trip to last weekend.

The tower on the left is the Oriental Pearl Tower. It was completed in 1994 and at 1535 ft is the highest tv and radio tower in Asia and third highest in the world. It’s instantly recognizable by its two 164 ft diameter pink spheres, which are connected by concrete tubing. Visitors can go inside the bubbles, but
I’ll save that for another day.
The next picture shows how crowded the Bund promenade is on a Sunday afternoon. The clock in the background is the Meteorological Signal Tower, build in 1907, and now home to the Bund Museum, which apparently has mostly old prints and a replica 1855 map of the area. The Tower was originally used to deliver typhoon warnings to local shipping.

And here is a fruit stand, with watermelon and cantaloupe on a stick.

So, now that I had an entire afternoon free, I had to think fast on what I wanted to see next. I headed back towards People’s Square. On the way I took this quick shot of a boy on one of the two Lions of Shanghai, at the former Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, which represent Protection and Security, and reputedly bring good luck if you rub their paws (which I did not).

I just thought this was a cool statue.















I decided to head towards the Antiques, Bird and Plant Market, because I miss my birds Zorro and Skye. Well, I found it, but they had everything but birds. It is a traditional Chinese market tucked off the main street with small alleyways. There are ancient Chinese fossils and rocks, porcelain, turtles, rabbits, all types of plants, and really beautiful bird cages. [I wonder how much to send one home?] Oh, I just read in the guidebook the best time to visit this market is Friday afternoons when the courtyards fill with "up-country peasants".

It was still early, so I decided to keep walking up Nanging Road, past the Shanghai Center Shopping area, to the Jingan Temple [Temple of Tranquility]. The first temple was build around the third century AD, but collapsed in 1216, to be rebuilt in somewhat similar fashion as today. It was rebuilt again in the 1990s, complete with shopping mall underneath.















I was exhausted by this point, so stopped for a beer and then headed back to the hotel (I had been walking for 6 hours). I read on NBA.com that Kevin Garnett arrived in Shanghai today after visiting Beijing and the Great Wall on a basketball promotion tour, but I wasn’t lucky enough to run into him. Guess I should have rubbed the lion’s paw.