five days in shanghai

Oh, where to begin? I think that posting at the end of any trip, starting from the beginning, is a daunting task. I tend to shy away from play-by-play recaps of trips that I have done (save a 30-day challenge that I did in Europe)—because, the truth is—we don’t really remember our trips like that, do we? We forget the crappy memorial that we just walked by with glazed eyes because it was a must-do on the flimsy maps they give out to tourists, which I think are secretly calculated for you to have the most horrifically boring trip possible (the Urban Planning Museum, really?) 

But we do remember the moment we first saw the skyscrapers towering over us in Pudong, Shanghai’s financial district. Absolutely freezing, slightly lost, late for a dinner meeting, tripped when getting out of the metro and there they were. 

Or the moment hours before, when you got out of the taxi, paid the sullen driver and walked into a quiet lane house in Shanghai’s expat district, Jing’an. The lane was quiet, the city seemed hushed, in that magical time following the afternoon, just before evening falls. 

And thus, was my first day in Shanghai, China—Paris of Asia, as they say…