a weirdo in china, pt. 8: intermission

Sorry for the extensive delay in posting this -- the internet was awful at my Beijing hotel, and after leaving Shanghai I couldn't connect to my blog to post anything.

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The next day was another big one for sightseeing. I decided to visit Yu Garden, a famous household garden dating back to the Ming dynasty. I decided to try to find it without relying on GPS, and I got completely lost on the way, and accidentally went to the City God Temple first.

This guy looks smug for a reason.

It's ostensibly a large temple complex dedicated to the particular gods who oversee Shanghai. In practice, it's a tourist trap, and does a poor job concealing that.

Such craftsmanship.

Room after room of cheap, shiny Buddhas and other god-figures got old REAL fast. I was glad it only cost USD $1.50 to get in there, because otherwise I would have been really grumpy! I only stuck around long enough to snap these photos and I was on my way.

These people are praying that they don't have to spend much longer here.

I turned the corner and found my real destination. After fending off a very pushy woman begging in the ticket line, I got my ticket and made my way inside a much more serene spot.

To enter, you need to cross the Nine-Turn Bridge, so designed because apparently demons are stupid enough that they get really confused when a bridge turns a lot and they won't be able to follow you across it. I don't know, the demons I've met have generally had a bit more wherewithal, but I suppose you take what placebos you can.

I don't know why they were spraying mist all over this boat.

There were some pretty cool fountains, though. And I wasn't even inside yet!

The gardens themselves were gorgeous. Shanghai contains a fair amount of foliage for a filthy cesspool of a city, especially in some of the hipper shopping districts, but everything generally feels constrained and disappointingly regimented. The gardens were different, there was a bit of natural, unchecked beauty. It was more like the constructions had been placed around the natural elements than the reverse, and it was beautiful.

I spent almost two hours just soaking in it. I think I may have been starved for nature, and a sense of cleanliness.

The thing about Shanghai is that everything is filthy. Yes, the streets are littered with trash, but so are the sidewalks, and so are peoples' homes. It is imperative that you are understand that this is just the natural state of things there. Regular people lack the time and inclination to pick up large messes, there is only a token effort made at official street-cleaning, and so piles of refuse and rubble simply grow and encompass entire stretches of walkway, courtyard, or alley.

Admittedly, this is outside of an active construction site.
But it actually looks better than many of the storefronts I walked past.

On top of the general sense of disorder, there's dirt and decay everywhere. Most of the official notices I saw were faded, frayed, or otherwise distressed. It's like the entire city is a broken window. Coupled with the poor air quality and fundamentally mercenary attitude of the populace, and Shanghai has all the character of a highway truck stop. And not one of the more savory ones. Beijing's a little different, but I'll get to that later.

There are some bright spots.

So the gardens were truly a much-needed time of respite for me. It gave me the chance to recharge my batteries, in a sense. Plus, it was quiet, which I only really understood I'd been missing when I returned into Shanghai proper and found myself once again assaulted with the clamor of dozens of millions of people doing their thing. And, of course, once again lost myself in the backstreets, far from the city center.

But a typhoon was on its away, and I had to hasten home. I only had one day left in Shanghai after this, but at least I felt like I had really seen it from every side, from the glitter and futurism of the Bund to the scrappy, beaten-down streets at the edge of the city. What more was left to see?