With a gloomy blanket of clouds encasing the sun, stirring, waking and getting moving proves more challenging today. Eventually the call of food lures us out and around the corner, where we set ourselves down outside a street stall on Zizhong Road, to the surprise of the staring locals.
Making our selection via pointing and gesture, I wind up with a sizeable, disconcertingly nondescript chunk of meat, a chicken leg, some bean sprouts and cabbage. Meka embellishes her vegetables with a slender deep fried fish and a tofu based dish, paying less that half of my 22 Ruan as a result. Apparently hers hits the spot. Mine, on the other hand, is destroyed by the limp, lank and enormous piece of hairy skin hanging from it, resembling the kind of aging, saggy, battle torn foreskin Korea's up-close-and-personal saunas left me all too familiar with. I gag at the thought and lament the quality of Thailand's street food, where this financial outlay would have landed me at least a couple of courses of lip-smacking delights.
Refueled and a little more energized, we grapple with Shanghai’s signage and the mental maps we had tried to impress upon our brains from a guide book back at the apartment.
After a number of wrong turns and some retracing of steps, we locate the site of the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party and proceed to force our way in, fighting for breaths amid a sea of impatient, pushy, tour group members. The museum is fully bilingual and includes an array of interesting primary sources, most of which aren’t. It traces the history of the Western presence in Shanghai, without much cogency, while, nevertheless, painting a captivating picture of the circumstances within which the Chinese Communist Party rose to prominence. We make our way steadily around, attempting to imbibe it all as various groups of Chinese and Westerners rush past us, disinterestedly, loudly and distractingly, with, it would seem, tight itineraries to keep to.
The museum completed, we are guided into the inevitable shop, which proves considerably more intriguing than the average, wracked up as it is with Communist kitsch. Unable to resist this bizarre collision of a political ideology and the desire to peddle any vaguely related tat you can to bolster profits, I plump for a Chairman Mao wristwatch, featuring his friendly, beaming mug and waving arm which greets the wearer at the tick of each second. This, I believe, is irony.
Back on the outside, we delve deeper into the leafy suburbs of Shanghai’s former International and French Concession, passing buildings employing the kind of brick work more commonly found on a British estate than in Asia. A lengthy stroll around this part of town reveals everything from German mansions to Orthodox Russian churches, highlighting how long Shanghai has been a cosmopolitan city.
Back on the main streets of the French Concession and the usual batch of multinational neon signs glare down at us, reinforcing – as if it were needed – that we are in an unusually affluent part of town, where the evidence of today's economic imperialism abounds. Decrying the excessively monied had become something of theme of my day, having been stung early on into our work, by a street vendor selling plums. Having been so stunned at the price he quoted (one that could shock even a Waitrose shopper), I forgot to haggle or, indeed, that I retained the right to walk away and ended up paying a King's ransom for a minor snack. Four plums for the price of 15 large bottles of beer at my newfound local hole in the wall, no less. Making an immediate decision thereafter, to clamp down on my day’s expenditure with the iron fist of the tightest chancellor, I then spent a significant period of time walking around a beautifully quirky network of back streets peddling arty wares and gourmet foods, looking for an affordable coffee. I failed and was still desperately seeking a caffeine injection to combat my growing lethargy as we landed back on the main street. With a reticence in my head and guilt in my heart, the lure of the golden arches and McCafe took me. Sorry China, I feel I’ve done you a disservice.
With what seemed like sizeable chunks of our already battered soles / souls expended on these leafy suburbs / McDonalds, we decided to make for base. En route, the pull of Peking Duck grabbed us, however, and we wound up chowing down on our first whole beast of the trip. Reenergised by a hearty hit of skin, flesh, pancakes and the sticky sauce, our plans changed and we made a beeline back to the People’s Park to attempt to track down the Museum of Contemporary Art once again. With a little extra knowledge as to its location, garnered from the Internet we were confident of success, but this was quickly eroded once again as, having trudged around most of the perimeter, we found the gates locked and backed by the obligatory, narky security guard, so common in these parts.
To ensure our trip wasn’t entirely wasted, we were soon discreetly drowning our sorrows, courtesy of a stealthy street beer or two on a bench under the bright lights of the bustling Nanjing Street nearby, watching the world go by and firmly dismissing fake watch and novelty-wheels-for-your-shoes salespeople as we did so.
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