i had lunch with a coworker at an area in XinTianDi called TianZiFang. It was by far the coolest part of SH i've encountered. i didn't get to take too many fotos but imagine old alleyways or hutongs where artist galleries are spread out, old old boutiques selling random stuff like tribal jewelry and strange icons of chinese children, even older offshoots of alleyways where pure poverty exists and people are hanging their underwear to dry, outdoor cafes where it looks like a cross between berkeley and granola towns like rhinebeck (in NY) and fairfax (in SF) where tons of expats are lounging, stores selling photoshopped fotos of you. we walked past a compost bin which looked like a prison cell. it was blistering heat and my coworker, who was pregnant was having heatstrokes. we found refuge inside Alley, a restaurant with a/c that served the best chicken sandwich i think i've ever had. it overlooked tons of alleys. after we ate, we walked around some more then headed over to DaGu Lu which is another very active street where we were meeting another coworker. we met inside a coffee house called SPR where i purchased a pretty unsatisfying cup of tea. then i walked along the street, got lost and finally found my way to the Metro. i love my Metro.
that night we met up with one of my coworkers and her husband at XTD or XinTianDi. this is an area in the city where they are unabashedly marketing themselves as a tourist trap. think Irvine Spectrum but Chinese version and you have the right idea. overpriced, crowded, tons of restaurants, mall stores, movie theatre, ice cream shops. we ate at Luna, a very overpriced Mediterranean place then walked around the area. i did not have my camera but took pics on my phone but have no way of accessing those fotos. :( i saw interesting paintings of ironic cultural fotos. that's the best way to describe them. like a man tied up to a pole but smiling. we walked past a museum of an old shikumen house. i did some research and learned that there was a mass influx of people into SH after the war. most houses were made of wood. after learning their lesson that they are easily burned down, they decided to build houses of stone. there are famous stone archways that are still in the city and in XTD as relics. apparently they mowed down a ton of homes to build the pompous plaza we were now in. just outside of the XTD plaza, apparently there are homes that have been around for ages and are rundown and in contrast to the gaudiness of XTD. after a while i had enough and we left. i didn't come this far to go to the spectrum.
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