Shanghai has been my final destination in China – the prior three cities I’ve visited because there were places that I’d wanted to visit, but I chose Shanghai as I just needed to fly out.
At the ripe old age of 24, what I was most excited coming here to do was to get my back sorted out. Getting here via a 14 hour train ride here obviously didn’t help me much, and I’ve been having pain for my whole stay here which I think/hope is just my back settling down. As a result, I’ve tried to rest – each day here I’ve tried to do something, but my back is my main priority.
My first full morning I spent in the Museum of Urban Planning. There’s a to-scale replica of the city, updated on a monthly basis. There’s also a photography exhibition in the building which was worth a visit too.
During the evening I went on a food tour which was pretty interesting. Our first stop served various kinds of pork belly, as well as a plate of noodles there having picked up some Chinese burgers prior. Everything tasted good, but I have eaten a lot of similar things before. Then we went to a seafood place and I was the first to volunteer to try some jellyfish – it tops the list of the worst things I’ve ever tried. There were a few more dishes, but I wasn’t really too fond of them.
Afterwards, we visited a Szechuan place where we had a selection of noodles, dumplings, some veggies and rabbits head, and then went off to go get some dumplings. Overall, I think my favourite stop would’ve been the dumpling place, though I was pretty full and trying to forget about the jellyfish.
Since that, I’ve not done a lot. Yesterday I went to a propaganda museum which displayed China’s political history from around World War II to the 1970s. I’m not very well informed about Chinese history, but a fair few things did start to make sense. Today, I went to the Yu Garden which was nice for a walk, but I just want to rest my back.
Tomorrow I’m off to Korea. It would’ve been nice to be able to explore Shanghai a bit more, but I’m not going to lose any sleep about it as I have to look after myself.