The trip should have happened three months earlier, over the Dragon Boat Festival, but COVID delays pushed it to mid-autumn. There were also holiday considerations. In the end it worked out: in 2021 I finally made it back to Shanghai, ten years after my last visit, when I was still in high school. Trips like this—part nostalgia, part reconnection—are the kind I’ll push through obstacles for.
September 19–22, 2021 (Mid-Autumn Festival)
Day 1 — September 19, 2021
Guangzhou ✈️ Shanghai. Ten years—how many decades does a person get?—and this outsider finally set foot on Shanghai soil again. After landing, the ID check was quick; no quarantine test and no special Shanghai permit requirement, so it felt safe to assume the next two or three days could go ahead. By the time I got from the airport to the hostel and checked in, it was about 3:30 p.m., so I hadn’t planned much. I wandered around the Nanjing Road area and found the pork chop with rice cake snack I’d seen recommended online. Maybe I didn’t get the authentic version—it was pretty ordinary. I’d arranged dinner with Dafei, my college roommate. We caught up on life and swapped old college stories; it was great. I have to mention his two trips to Hong Kong to take the CCIE exam—hilarious and impressive. He quietly walked away with a certification that had been hyped to the skies back in our college days.
After chatting with Dafei I went to the Bund. It was past 9:30 p.m. and there was still crowd control; I saw the armed police forming human walls. I walked along the Bund to the Waibaidu Bridge and remembered that my first day in Shanghai ten years earlier had also included the Bund and this bridge. I was quite moved and retook a few photos from the same angles as the old ones. A perfect day.
Day 2 — September 20, 2021
Tongji University → Yangpu District Environmental Protection Bureau (now an environmental monitoring station) → Xintiandi → Shanghai Tower.
Today was mostly revisiting places from ten years ago. One summer ten years ago I spent a month at Tongji: dorm, cafeteria, library, swimming pool. Eating at Tongji was a thing then and probably still is. Unfortunately COVID rules kept me off campus. The surroundings and plane trees didn’t look very different from memory; the bus stops along the road had become more modern.
I took a bus about 20 minutes to my old workplace—Yangpu District Environmental Protection Bureau, now an environmental monitoring station. My memory of it was fuzzy; looking at the building I couldn’t even tell whether it had looked like this ten years ago. But the university opposite the bureau was vivid—that confirmed I had the right place. Back then I’d go into that campus for lunch after the morning shift: a meal card, unlimited portions, fruit, and a pretty rich selection. (PS: the benefits inside the system were really good, and this was ten years ago; my actual work was just photocopying and Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.)
I’d planned to go to Shanghai Museum after the bureau, but when I arrived I found same-day reservations were full, so I gave up. I’d thought about booking the day before, but the system only allowed entry at a fixed time slot, and I didn’t want to lock my day down that tightly. I decided to chance it; holiday luck wasn’t with me.
Before Xintiandi I thought about stopping at Jing’an Temple, another online recommendation, but on arrival there was on-site reservation queuing and a 50-yuan entrance fee that seemed to be for incense. Fine—I hadn’t really wanted to go, and that combination talked me out of it.
Xintiandi was even more bustling, with lots of brands I’d never heard of or seen. There were still plenty of foreigners; it remains a good place to relax and shop. Ten years ago I saw Yao Ming there in person.
After a day of pounding the pavement, I finally headed to Shanghai Tower on a tip from an online forum. I’d planned to take the ferry Dafei told me about from the Bund to Lujiazui—the two-yuan one—for fun. When I got there, a notice said it was suspended for the holiday. If I wanted a ferry, I’d have to take a sightseeing boat, starting around 120 yuan. I was stunned: a holiday is a reason to stop the ferry? Capitalist Hong Kong never did that; apparently socialism with capitalist characteristics has its own methods. In the end I called a car from the Bund to the tower. There wasn’t much of a queue to the observation deck. Honestly, the view of Shanghai from Shanghai Tower is beautiful; the high-rises you see from the Bund can all be admired from above. The downside: people camp out in the best spots. They stand at the prime angle for the Oriental Pearl Tower and don’t move. I don’t get it—it’s 360 degrees, are you only looking at one place? Another odd move: maybe the staff anticipated this, but a crowd jammed the best viewing spot, so most people couldn’t enjoy it and were squeezed into the passage. And right there in the already crowded passage they’d set up red exhibition posters about Party history, making it even more crowded. Shanghai Tower, are you serious? Do you really think people coming up for the night view are in the mood to read Party history? More seats would have been better.
Day 3 — September 21, 2021
Sihang Warehouse → Duolun Road → Wukang Road → Mid-Autumn dinner.
I went to Sihang Warehouse because of the movie The Eight Hundred from last year. That kind of patriotic film still moves me; the story doesn’t have much to do with the CCP, and it doesn’t just hammer you with supposed hate-your-country, hate-people ideas. The hostel wasn’t far, so I walked over and caught the first reservation slot of the day (these attractions all seem to require reservations). Following the museum’s route, the first section indeed emphasized the background of KMT-CCP cooperation... At a soldier sculpture, a woman mistook it for a Japanese soldier and hit the statue’s head three times. Her companion reminded her it was a Kuomintang soldier; she hurriedly said sorry to the sculpture, explaining she’d thought it was a Japanese soldier. Later, at another sculpture confirmed to be a Japanese soldier, she hit that one’s head a few more times... Is this the effect of nationalism? 😂
On the way to Duolun Road I ate a youdunzi (fried radish cake) and a scallion pancake; both were delicious. That’s what I like—stumbling on street snacks. Duolun Road was another online recommendation, but the whole street felt ordinary, without much sense of age. Maybe compared with Shamian it’s a bit low-key, ha ha.
Wukang Road (Ferguson Road) was the finale. With A-Bao’s recommendation behind it, I had to go. Another road with stories and history; the plane trees suit it perfectly. I’m curious how the people who live there feel about being watched by different tourists every day 😂. After Wukang Road I had soup dumplings—delicious, and I was hungry.
The last event was dinner at Dafei’s. Besides him and his girlfriend, there was a former colleague of his from Guangzhou. The four of us had a simple meal (Dafei cooked), then went out to admire the moon, and then to karaoke. Dafei’s singing is solid. Later I had to catch the metro back to the hostel, which killed the vibe; all told I only sang for about an hour. I still have to thank Dafei. I’d originally planned to meet him once for dinner and chatting and not bother him further, but I ended up mooching a Mid-Autumn dinner at his place 😁.
Day 4 — September 22, 2021
Shanghai ✈️ Guangzhou.
On the way there I flew Baiyun to Pudong; coming back it was Hongqiao to Baiyun. I thought it was no big deal, then discovered the flight was unfortunate Spring Airlines: no free baggage allowance (150 yuan for checked luggage), and they don’t proactively hand out water. I should be glad I’d never flown Spring before; I’ll probably avoid it in the future. People say this is common for budget airlines, but AirAsia is budget too and much better.
Back in Guangzhou, I thought I could relax on the metro home, but at security I left my backpack behind. Annoying—and lucky—I only remembered two stops later, then turned back. I really have to thank Guangzhou Metro 🚇 and its staff. At the service center I told them the backpack’s features and my ID info (my ID was in the wallet in the backpack), and I got it back smoothly. A sigh of relief; a scare but no real harm. All the important things were in that backpack.
It was a tiring but happy (and fulfilling) trip. Next time I should go to a city I haven’t visited before (not counting Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan). 😉