The Pearl of the Orient

On any trip that I actually have to pay for, my natural instinct, honed by years of traveling on a budget, is to pick each hotel by searching the internet and choosing whatever's cheapest and reasonably close to the city center, even if it happens to be a cockroach-infested rundown youth hostel with stacked flee-ridden beds and no sheets standing smack in the middle of a crack slum. This has proven to be a very good policy, because I am still alive and considerably less in debt than I'd be otherwise.

Having said that, I also believe that right in the middle of any long trip there is value in lying down for a couple days in a really nice hotel and enjoying a little respite of gratuitous luxury. Hence, the Grand Hyatt Shanghai.

This hotel's swanky lobby on the 54th floor of Jin Mao Tower, and the 29-story atrium that rises above it, must be a sight to behold no matter where you're coming from. After 35 hours in an airport and 2 under a punishing rainstorm on the streets of Shanghai, it was heaven. We had a most-indulgent midnight snack of chocolate mousse, tiramisu and brandy, then repaired to our rooms and a warm crib of fluffy pillows and zillion-thread-count Egyptian cotton, where we fell asleep instantly.

Waking up in these posh surroundings was just as pleasant as falling asleep had been. We had breakfast and met Gauthier, who had just flown in from Switzerland and would be with us for the remainder of the trip, then left on a subway ride across the river to Shanghai's old town. This being urban China, "old" is anything built before 1990.

We spent the afternoon walking around, doing nothing much. We started in People's Square and walked to a nearby park, then had a surprisingly good lunch in an underground shopping mall before making our way down Nanjing Road, Shanghai's 6km-long main commercial street.

Any visitor to China who expects (or, in that perverted way of Westerners traveling to the third world, hopes) to feel sorry for the poor oppressed Chinese should probably steer clear of Shanghai. While the average Chinese is far from well-off, some of them are upper-middle class or even plain filthy rich. A small proportion of 1.3 billion people makes for a huge luxury goods market, many of them being sold in Shanghai. So, as we were walking down Nanjing Road, we window-shopped among all the usual suspects of upscale districts anywhere: Giorgio Armani, Cartier, Maserati…

We were feeling at least as poor and out-of-our-league as we'd be if this was London or Milan, and as far as our eyes could see it could very well have been. This entire part of Shanghai is thoroughly European, showing a blend of Victorian and Modern architecture that seems completely sheltered from the rest of China. However, one glaring Chinese influence remained: touts. I've written before about the persistence of Chinese street vendors, but nowhere are they as omnipresent as along Nanjing Road. I was asked if I was interested in an iPhone more times than if I'd spent the entire afternoon in any Apple Store.

The other difference with Western centers of wealth was how thin the opulence layer was. We left Nathan Road for a cross-city walk, and only three blocks away from the couture and luxury shops the asphalt started cracking, Victorian offices gave way to rundown prefabricated housing and suddenly we were in a provincial town in Cambodia.

We ended our long walk near Yuyuan Garden, one of the rare traditionally Chinese tourist hotspots of Shanghai, famous for its Disney-like zig-zag bridge. It was highly reminiscent of Chengdu's monastery, and just as rich in street food. We had a great snack of Xiao Long Bao, a delicious dumpling filled with meat and soup, then headed back to the hotel to freshen up before the evening.

To say the least, Shanghai leaves the visitor spoiled for choice for evening entertainment. We were lucky enough to know Ben, a friend of Rolando who'd been living in Shanghai for a couple years, and whom we met for dinner in a Japanese all-you-can-eat restaurant. There, for about 17 Euros per head, we were encouraged to eat and drink anything listed on the vast menu in any quantity that we fancied. Ben did most of the ordering, which included nearly all the sushis, sashimis and tempura on offer, large bowls of rice and curry, and many vases of sake. I am not sure I had ever seen that much food on a single table, certainly not on one so small, but we were all highly motivated to conquer it, and soon we were ordering second and third helpings. We stayed there for nearly three hours and a complete tour of Japanese cuisine. I personally ate what seemed like three whole salmons before we even got to the main course.

We eventually emerged and went for a digestive taxi ride that somewhat unexpectedly ended at a night club in a location that will remain secret because I don't have the foggiest idea where it is. It was a two-story thing with three big dance floors surrounded by booths and bars selling bottles of Russian Vodka at very attractive prices. My recollections of the rest of the night are somewhat foggy, but at around 3:30AM the group eventually split amid some confusion, with Rolando and Ben moving on to some other club, most of the others staying there for a little more, and me leaving for a soul-searching walk looking for a deeper meaning to my life and a taxi back to Lujiazui.