Shanghai: Subway Rides, Jade Buddha, and Noodle Man

It had been a while since I talked with my three youngest siblings, so I rang them up in the morning and chatted with them a bit. It was really nice.



Alex and I planned to go to the Jade Buddha temple (the main attraction here is a Buddha made of jade). Marco, John, and Raphael were going there as well, so we all left together. I had the directions from a subway station different than the one near our hostel. I suppose I should have looked up a map before leaving, but that would have been too logical. Most subways have maps along the walls, so I was going to just refer to that. Too bad I didn't see one. I knew we needed to get to line 4 and because I didn't see a proper subway map, I looked at the line 2 route (the line by our hostel) and saw that it crossed line 4 at two points, both about four stops away; albeit different directions. I chose the train heading left. When we got to line 4 we realized choosing the train heading right would have been a much better choice. Raphael and Marco went off to find a map to see if there was a quicker way. I told them the name of the stop we were looking for and they found a shorter route. Turns out Raphael misread the map and his way wasn't shorter after all. To be fair, the stop we needed was one letter off from the stop he lead us to. We joked about how our sole activity for the day would be riding the Shanghai subway. We didn't actually think it would happen that way. When we finally arrived at the correct station (more than an hour later and really only about five stops away from our hostel) Raphael, John, and Marco saw some of their friends from university and decided to ditch the temple and go with their friends instead. So they really did just ride the subway.

Alex and I stopped in a bakery for breakfast and made our way to the temple. It was really neat. There were monks having a service and chanting a song. I didn't think it was appropriate to take a photo or video, so I just stood in the back and watched. There were a lot of different statues at the temple. There was the famous Sitting Buddha and the Recumbent Buddha, as well as a fat laughing Buddha, one really intricate carving with lots of tiny gods climbing over one another to reach the Buddha at the top, and a few others. There was a pond with some brilliant koi swimming. The temple was really peaceful.

Recumbent Buddha

I can't recall the name of this one...

Intricately carved figures climbing to reach Buddha

Alex and I perused some shops then made our way back to the hostel, taking the correct route this time. We had dinner with Lincoln and Matt then walked to the Bund (a promenade along the river) and saw some dragon boats. The Dragon Boat Festival day was this week, but there were not many activities in Shanghai before I was set to leave- just a lot of extra people. The Bund was really crowded (Oh China) with spectators. It was basically a small parade with various lighted up dragon boats as floats. They were neat, but it was still a parade and I made my feelings on parades known in my Kyoto post.

Lincoln and Matt went to a Chinese concert- oh yeah, Lincoln speaks Chinese- and Alex and I ate some overpriced, but delicious gelato. Then I went back to the hostel to get ready to go out with Karla and Norah. We tried to get Alex to come to no avail. Johnny and Horst came along and at the last minute Eva, a Danish girl in my room. Karla texted her promoter friend and he was at M2. We took a couple cabs and when we got there it was clearly better than Cuvee. Same deal- no cover, free drinks, only the atmosphere was better at M2. There were more people and better music. And the free drinks weren't limited to cheap vodka and Tang. M2 even had a live performance.

We visited Noodle Man and BBQ man after the club and Noodle Man made me some super spicy noodles. I just let him make me whatever he thought was best because he was the professional. He asked if I wanted spice and I said OK. These noodles were delicious and so, so spicy. Spicier even than the spicy duck neck in Beijing. I powered through and ate all the noodles. Yum :)