Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

Just a quick blog post from Shanghai. I don’t have a lot of photos to show you as my phone is having issues with my son’s computer.

Firstly, it is hot and muggy. As it is a week of public holidays it hasn’t been too crowded mostly. By mostly I mean when we go to tourist things like The Bund then it is crowded, but probably not normal crowded.

My son lives is a lovely little apartment in a tree lined suburb. Apparently it is is a trendy area. He has aircon. Grin!

Today we are going shopping. Tomorrow we are going on a tour for a couple of days to the coast about six hours drive away.

My grasp of the lingo is not good. I can barely manage xie xie (thank you). The food has been awesome. Yesterday we had Vietnamese and much nicer than the Australian version. We went to a poshy modern Chinese cuisine place called Lost Heaven and it was fab. So was their bakery, Lost  Bakery. We’ve also eaten at an American diner in the French concession-bloody awesome food. Yesterday we tried some street food. Yummy!

Also of interest is the amount of tech here. There is WeChat, the Chinese version of Twitter, and you can use that to pay for things using a QR code. Pretty amazeballs if you ask me.

Now for some photos.

People’s Square on the walk down to the Bund.

An example of some of the architecture along the People’s Square

The Peace Hotel, near the Bund.

View from the Bund

Electronic billboard. Can’t remember the name of this area.

This mall was near the Bund and it blew our minds. It was huge. It is not even one of the largest malls  here. It had curved escalators and a roof motif that mimicked the sky and Iron Man.

The only other photo I’ve managed to save to this pc is this pic of the Jinjian Temple which isn’t far from here.

This morning I probably had a dose of culture shock. I blame this on the horror-type movies we watched last night. I’m not normally into the gruesome. Caught up with Horns (based on  Joe Hill’s novel, which I own but haven’t read). Daniel Radcliffe did an amazing job. A really unusual tale too. Pretty awesome movie. I don’t think it had a cinema release in Australia. The other was a pretty riveting watch called. He Never Died or something like that. Available on Netflix. I really should have watched something light before bed as the book I’m reading is a bit dark too. But I’m fine now. My son made crepes and coffee. Anyway I’m off to do  some shopping for some cooler tshirts for this trip.