A little bit about Bob. My dad has known Bob Fu for a number of years from his visits to Shanghai. By day he’s an Operations Manager for Tiger Tech; but it appears that his real job is a merchandise broker. Bob is married to a wonderful lady (who is also a Shanghai local) and they have a daughter who will be making her first trip to the United States later this year for business. He’s also a true local -- born and raised in Shanghai. He spent some time in the United States, when he worked for Bic, the pen people. As a local, he knows his way around and how to negotiate when we are shopping. They refer to his form of Mandarin dialect as as Shanghai-ese (the –ese comes from Chinese). When in Shanghai, there are 4-5 pricing levels with the tourist level paying the highest price. Bob sticks with my dad and will make sure he gets the best price. Truthfully, we would never know but the prices seem fair when we convert them to US$. I’m thankful for our own translator/negotiator/tour guide. We refer to Bob as the professional shopper.
The plan today included a tour-guided trip by Bob to see the Shanghai World Financial Building. The building is shaped like a bottle opener at the top. It is the tallest building in Shanghai (soon to be the second tallest) and currently, the second tallest building in the world. Coincidentally, the third tallest building is in Hong Kong, our next port.
As we entered the building they showed a comparison of Tokyo, New York City, and Shanghai in the growth of how fast they became skyscraper cities. In the last 20 years, Shanghai has exploded in growth. The next model was a diorama of the entire town of Shanghai. They showed the town throughout the day when it was lit up and when it was not.
We went on a mission to get to the top of the building and made it 492 meters high. I had to pop my ears it was so high. Sadly, it was very foggy that day. We could barely see, making it hardly worth it.
As we moved down floors of the building we could begin to see again. I thought it was really cool to see the city from a different perspective. We had a cup of coffee when we were still very high up looking out and found the ship. We could only see the ship when the clouds kept moving.
Bob enjoying himself.
We walked outside the building snapped a few pictures and made our way to a part of town that was more traditional Shanghai with the Chinese-looking buildings you would expect.
Nearby there was an estate that belongs to an Emperor and well over 800 years old. Inside, we found an amazing Garden with waterfalls, flowers, funky Chinese plants, bonsai trees, stone buildings, ponds with the big goldfish, etc.
It was so pretty to walk through.
The buildings in the garden included carvings in the stone at the top of the building -- these carvings were snakes, dragons and other traditional Chinese images. Bob had interesting stories and folk-lore behind the carvings.
After we made our way out of the garden we grabbed lunch. It was again a family-style meal including dumplings. The chefs were preparing the dumplings at another end of the restaurant. It was so neat watching them make it. It was kind of like watching Krispy Kreme make your donuts. I spotted a Hagen Das outside of the restaurant. Somehow Bob figured out that I'm a lover of ice cream. So, of course, we went to Hagen Das!
Bob took us shopping and I got some wallets, a backpack, and a new NorthFace jacket (my NorthFace jacket started to rip). We didn't have to negotiate but it was still very stressful. Bargaining on top of trying to decide what you want and dealing with the person selling us the products was a challenge. All the stores in the shopping complex are very small but they all have hidden back rooms (special shopping for special customers according to Bob; AKA black market).
Bob then took us to a different part of Shanghai; the old town for the French and Germans. And very traditional. The buildings were very small/short but so cute!
We stopped at a German Restaurant and enjoyed a beverage. Dad and Bob had German beer while I enjoyed a latte.
Dad requested the restaurant for tonight where their specialty was spicy ribs. Yum! Everything was very spicy but you should know that I'm a spicy wimp. Bob even thinks that the food there is spicy. The restaurant is traditional Shanghai. Mister Lu is from Southeast China and he didn't find the food as spicy as we all thought.
After Dinner, Dad and I went to get a massage. Massages are very popular in China. Some of folks that my dad works with told him that it is not uncommon to have 3 or 4 massages a week. They jokingly refer to this as exercise (the lazy man’s workout). The first hour started out as a foot massage (this consisted of soaking our feet in a wooden bucket filled with hot water and herbs while the masseuse worked on our shoulders and eventually finished up with our pruned feet). The second hour consisted of a body massage. The whole experience was unique as neither party could communicate other than a few hand gestures. We finished up relaxed and walked back to the apartment which was only a few blocks away.
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