Shanghai: June 19: Urban Planning Exhibition Center and more

This day I hit the final site that I thought I would regret missing in Shanghai if I didn't get to see it.

As with the previous day, the sky was crystal clear.

I took a handful of photos.

The morning started off with steamed buns as usual. For lunch, I met a friend, B, that I hadn't seen in years because he now lives in Beijing. We had Japanese food near his office.

After lunch, since I had more time than I required to get to my next destination, I decided to attempt taking a bus. This is quite a challenge because none of the signs are in English or even pinyin (Romanized Chinese) and none of the drivers speak English. Without having done prior research, I managed to board a bus which took me to a metro station I was familiar with. Naturally, it took substantially longer than the taxi I took to get to B's office, but I'm nevertheless proud I managed to navigate the bus system on my own.

I had to go to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center because I liked the analogous center in Singapore so much. Shanghai's center, like Singapore's, has a huge model of the city. However, though sizable and decent, it's not as good because, for instance, there are no labels or street names. I can't even find where I live because neither the small creek that runs by the apartment nor the nearby train station are represented. The model lack other distinctive city landmarks (e.g., yuyuan garden). In short, they lack character.

Shanghai's model is also a little misleading because they put trees where some buildings should be, thereby making the model city look more green. It's also misleading because it doesn't include the walls protecting old residences from the road, thereby making the model city appear less claustrophobic than the city actually is.

A room next to the model has an audio/visual version of it: the room, with a 360-degree screen, displays fly-throughs of various parts of the city. If you can't go to a city, I think this type of movie is a great way to see it.

Besides the models, the center displays Shanghai's plans for the future (e.g., environment improvements, redevelopment), but these lack details and are only there to reflect philosophy. Contrast this vagueness with Singapore's center, which actively calls for public comment on detailed plans.

In addition, the center has many old photographs of Shanghai, mostly of famous buildings and statues. Some photographs are in massive books, by which I mean books that, though not thick, are tall and wide, with pages 3 feet by 2 feet.

There's also a special exhibit on the changes for the 2010 expo. I like how the exhibits displayed models of all the design proposals Shanghai received from architectural firms, not only the ones they selected.

In the evening, Di Yin and I went to Jishi (Jesse), an old-school Shanghainese restaurant. What we got turned out to be good, though ordering was a comedy. They were out of the fish we tried to order, and also out of eel, and also out of moppet's cabbage, and also out of bamboo shoots.

Incidentally, when I moved to Shanghai in November, it turned out my apartment is three blocks from this restaurant.