The Streets of Shanghai - Shanghai - Things To Do Reviews

The reasons why Shanghai is the city that most people love, are in the streets. It is not only about The Bund, the flea markets, the crowds walking all day up and down Nanjing Road or the futuristic architecture at Pudong like the Oriental Pearl or the Jim Mao Tower. There is also something about all those "other streets". Some of them may not even make it to the list in your Shanghai city guide but is in those streets where I constantly fall in love with this city as I walked (and got lost) over and over again.

Industrial crowded neighborhoods and hundreds of bicycles parked in the sidewalks or just circulating by, in-between and around big buses that seem to always be just a few inches away from making contact with everything that's on their way, are some of the things you will find if you just decide to walk for a few miles. There is also the ambulant sellers of art, tea, dumplings, books, toys and pretty much anything you could think of and everything happens "around the corner" if not right where you are standing, no matter where you are.

And even though it sounds chaotic, Shanghai was still beautiful for me. I guess because of all those things that to someone born and raced in a western culture and to be more precise, latin american, are unusual. Or maybe because my green eyes would make some "radicals" take me pictures or throw a smile at every moment, making me feel like everyone in this city was saying hello to me as I was walking; and considering the number of people here, that is a lot of smiles in a very few days.

Hopefully, the contrast that you can see today in Shanghai, that one of an emerging and growing 21st century infrastructure combined with the old narrow european looking alleys with clothes hanging out of the windows... that killing uniqueness and awkward beauty, hopefully, will stay there forever. Fernando