So Jacqueline was visiting me 10 days over New Year’s Eve and we decided not to spend too much time in Taiwan. To make sure, I like this country very much but we are young and have to see the world. While spinning our imaginary globe to look for a place to stay at New Year’s our imaginary dart landed on the biggest city in China – Shanghai!

Shock

After we landed in Shanghai, we took the magnetic levitation train and MRT to cruise to the inner city. My first thought was, that for a mega city with 23 MILLION residents (whole Austria: 8,5 Mio. – so small) there is a lot of space, but after we went off the MRT at our station People Square it hit me – or 100 people hit me in 30 seconds while passing on the pavement.

Our hotel was the Jin Jiang Pacific Hotel, one of the oldest and luxurious hotels in Shanghai. The next shock hit me. Not because the building and room was fabulous – I was happy here, not shocked – but the difference in mentality between Taiwan and Shanghai. Friendliness is not their slogan in China. However, the hotel was as said before, fabulous!

City rush

After Check in we went to the Nanjiang Road, the biggest shopping street in Shanghai, maybe even China. Here the accumulation of people reached the peak. If you look for shelter of the mass, you won’t find any in the shops – there are people everywhere! In the M&Ms world we grabbed sweets from the Great Wall of Chocolate and strolled through various clothing stores.

At the end of the shopping street the Bund is awaiting you. Here the historical and architectural beauty of the city is shown. On one shore you can see the tremendous skyline of Shanghai, highlighted by the Indian Pearl, Screwdriver and Shanghai Tower.

On the other side of the Huangpu river a 2,5 kilometre esplanade is showing of. Here you can find various architectural types of buildings, which mostly reminded me of British and French 19^th century palazzo. I used Italian here because we ate at the Italian restaurant Goodfellas dinner on the 30^th December and it was not only awesome in taste but friendly and personal in every occasion!

Here is a random picture of bacon! It was my first real breakfast bacon in four months. Just to let you know. Bacon is love, bacon is life!

Smile at every sea level

On New Year’s Eve day’s morning Jacqueline and I went to Madame Tussauds, which was located 34,5 meter away from our hotel. There we posed with famous important people such as Barak Obama, Vladimir Putin, Albert Einstein and Sid from Ice Age.

We also saw people that are important for doing things like acting or kicking a ball.

In the afternoon we went to down town to climb the second highest building in the world – Shanghai Tower. With the fastest elevator carrying people we went to the highest observation deck in the world to see the foggiest part of Shanghai. At a sea level of 546 meter we barely could see 5 kilometer in each direction. Nevertheless, the height was awesome and seeing other skyscrapers like they are houses for ants was amazing.

Waiting for the BigBang

We went to Shanghai to celebrate New Year’s Eve in one of the most exciting metropolis in the world. First we had plans to go to the David Guetta concert, but it was cancelled due to safety reasons. So we decided to watch the firework at the shore. In the internet a light-show and extraordinary firework was announced and to have a good place at the Bund we camped there from 8.30PM on. As time passed approximately 100000 people came to the river to see the spectacular of protons and black powder and freeze with us at cosy 0°Celsius.

And then finally at 00.00 — NOTHING HAPPENED!

Everything was dark, no one knew what is going on, we just noticed that the 1000 police officers observing the crowd insisted that the people go home. We were concerned, maybe there has been a warning of some kind of attack. We went home to our hotel to do research, but we could not find information. The internet is restricted in China and we even had to use Bing instead of Google. IEH! So we puzzled but had been glad, that we are back in a warm room!

On the next day we travelled to Hong Kong, and one of the first thing we did was research. We found out that 36 people died in a stampede while rushing to the firework and countdown on New Year’s Eve in 2014/15. Due to this tragedy the city government cancels the firework every year since then, but letting tourists unaware of it.

 

The city of Shanghai is awesome. The mega city can show of with buildings, shopping and culture, but some main land Chinese really need positive-attitude and manner-classes. Nevertheless, the city is worth a visit and as fast we could say Shanghai we had to say Shang-Bye!