Wokie... Finally found some time to select some photos we took at Shanghai while we were there on June 28 to July 4. Chet was there for a couple of days before me cuz she was a speaker at a biology conference, which was primarily why we decided to go for the trip, since her air fare is taken care of. Below are some photos, taken by Chet before I was there, of the famous Nanjing E. Road (南京东路), where there is a congregation of high end retail of international brands. Still, the architecture is quite charming, despite all those glaring neon signboards hanging from all over the facade.




Chet also took a river cruise down the Huang Pu River (黄浦江), the reason why Shanghai thrived as a port in the past. Some iconic buildings such as the Oriental Pearl Tower (东方明珠塔), and buildings on the Bund (上海滩), are visible on the river that splits Shanghai into its modern area (浦东), and old historic area (浦西).

On the last day of the Conference, Chet was awarded Young Investigator Award...! We noticed that things in Shanghai are gi-normous. Buildings are huge, the city is huge, people are aplenty, and their certificates are A3 -.-" The lady in the photo beside Chet is Zhuo Yang, who was kind enough to show us around the city for our 1st day. We didn't do much the 1st day, just met up at the university, checked into our hostel, The Phoenix (凤凰会所), located along Yunnan S. Road(云南南路) just off People's Square (人民广场). Okay I'm starting to wonder if i can be patient enough to key in the mandarin translation of the places for all my posts related to Shanghai. I'll try...

Basically 2 things are worth mentioning for day 1. We went to a textile factory in Lu Jia Bang (陆家浜), where they sold all sorts of fabric materials. They have tailors in there who are able to duplicate any suit / jacket designs, as long as you can describe it to them, or better, if you have any sample pictures taken from fashion magazines etc. The cost is pretty cheap too, and the quality is decent, and most importantly it is made-to-measure. My suit cost me S$100 equivelant, and Chet made a jacket for S$50. We didnt' collect the clothes there and then of course... But we planned to collect them in 3-4 days time. We didn't know this lobang, until my boss talked to me about where to go / what to do in Shanghai.

Afterwards, Zhuoyang brought us to 上海老站, a restaurant at Xu Jia Hui (徐家汇). The restaurant is a building with a courtyard, in which sits two train cabins, that were supposed to have played hosts to 慈禧太后 and 宋庆龄, two very famous ladies in the history of China. We ate in one of the cabins. The food was great! I recon it is the best meal we had in Shanghai...!