Our train to Shanghai was of the overnight sleeper variety and not, very unfortunately, the bullet variety. We had a hot, sweaty trek to the station while being stared at by the locals and it was nice to get in to the waiting room and relax for a couple of hours before departure. The general conception is that British people love to queue but we have nothing on the Chinese. They started a good hour before departure time. We were seated next to the queue so we just waited until the gate was called and stood up and joined, rather than trek to the end. I'm pretty sure we sent a few Chinese sprawling with a large backpacks. We'd been fairly lucky on previous trains that we'd had fellow travellers in our rooms. This time though, we were joined by some locals. When we got to our room there were about 4 people in and around it so who our roomies actually were was anybody's guess. By the time we started moving, everyone had settled though and we were joined by the hungriest, messiest Chinaman we could possibly encounter, and his wife. He ate and piled up the mess of fruit for the first 2 hours of travel. The waste would be left on the table for the entire trip. We were left to our own devices for the evening though, so got through some reading and ate some instant noodles for dinner. The train was a bit grim, so we just wanted the trip to be over. We tried to sleep but our roommates were unable to whisper or said what needed to be said outside the room, so they made a bit of noise most of the night.
(We saw this man in xi'an station, I thought he looked like Simon Cowell, Charlotte thought he looked like Jim Carrey)
Friday
We eventually pulled into the station over an hour late. It was about 9 o'clock in the morning so we were dreading the slog through the rush hour commute. It turned out not to be too bad, it was busy but nowhere near as bad as we had anticipated. We were taken straight to our room and dropped our bags. A quick browse on tripadvisor didn't bring up huge lists of things to do in Shanghai. The only thing of note was an area of the city called the Bund, which is a riverside promenade. We headed straight out. Fortunately, our map covered it and we followed the road down to the river. It was quite impressive, the view from our side offered great vistas of the Shanghai skyline, across the river. We found it strange that we were still getting stares of curiosity, in such a cosmopolitan city like Shanghai. Then, to top it off, yet another person came up to me, admiring the beard and wanting a photo. He had, surreptitiously, tried to take one but we caught him before he could, so he came up to me and asked for one. We had a quick walk along the Bund, moved down one of the main shopping streets and then stopped for some food. We fancied a change and tried an Italian place we found but it was such a disappointment, always stick with local food. But don't sit with the locals, during our meal a Chinese lady next to Charlotte tilted her body and broke wind in our direction. This was then followed numerous audible burps and aftershocks. Charlotte and I were fairly taken aback, as she was fairly old and gave no acknowledgment of her rudeness. We left unimpressed, in more ways than one. I came up with the idea that it would be a good idea to buy a Mahjong set, which is like a Chinese version of solitaire. We stopped by our hostel to have a look where we might find one but couldn't really find any clues. We spent our evening hunting through the bookshops and stationary stores but to no avail, we had to give up. They are pretty heavy anyway. We went back to Chinese for dinner and it was reasonably priced and delicious, we even treated ourselves to a beer out for once.
(Baked sweet potato was a popular street snack)
That really was it for Shanghai (told you it was whistle stop). We had an early start to catch our flight to Japan the next day.
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