11 hours is barely enough to scratch the surface in seeing most cities, Shanghai included, although the place has one major advantage for the layover visitor – The Maglev. Super quick transfer into town. But I’m gonna go through this piece by piece and break it down for price to help future layover humans. Now I’m in the land of Tiktok I should try and raise my hits. For new visitors finding this for the layover info, I do this blog every day in some form or other. Often it’s just a contemplation of my own armpit, something a bit pretentious, or a drunken rant about nothing. Other times I make something I’m proud of. Imagine a tombola at a church fête and the donated prizes. “A Top of the Pops CASSETTE!” “A can of BEANS!” “A Ming VASE!” One day I’ll feed it all into an AI and go toe to toe with it. Today though it’s whistle stop Shanghai-time and I’ll miss the posting deadline because internet is virtually impossible here.
I did some planning in advance. It is important to do so considering the culture shock and lack of internet. Even if you download Google maps for the city in advance, the GPS might well be off if it finds you at all. US big sites are all blocked including this one. No wonder my right wing techgeriatric brother wants us all to believe by numbers that TikTok is evil as its how the youth are being Chinificated by Iran or somesuch I stopped listening bless his hard heart.
I made my layover work out without quite enough prep, but found myself thanking my stars for my strangely good direction instinct – “You’ve got a bump of locality,” dad would say. Haven’t used it much lately. I’ve been cursing myself for quite how much I’ve come to rely on my phone to tell me things, including where I am. Also I knew the shape of the city and there are distinct tall buildings to navigate by.
Also If I hadn’t been quick and lucky it might have worked out very badly for me so there’s a warning in my day too. Shanghai has never been known as a safe place. Tintin, Phileas Fogg and any number of unwilling midshipmen had trouble. So did I.
We landed in Pudong at 5.55am local time. My flight to Osaka wasn’t until 17:25. I had come from the UK so had been trying to trick my body into being ready to stay up long enough to see the sights. I was a little woozy leaving the plane though. Less than an hour of actual sleep. The rest was just sitting with my eyes closed.
The blue landing form I was served on the plane turned out to be the wrong one, but I filled it in anyway and then brandished it as I made my way out. My bag is checked to Japan but I’ve got my iPad and Kindle with me in hand luggage. I have no Chinese language. Not a sausage. I’ve made no effort to learn any words at all. I’ve been thinking about my Japanese which was almost as bad a week ago.
I make do with numbers and gesticulating.
What you need to do is head through immigration, oh fellow layoverite. Don’t go into transit. If anyone tries to make you – (and they probably will) – I found the words “Transit Visa” are useless, but they use the same symbols for numbers so “24 hour transit visa” usually elicited the response “24!” and a wave in the right direction. I didn’t have any correct form though until I got to the immigration security desk. He was very helpful though, and basically got out the right one and filled it in with me. It’s free. In exchange for your skin.
Having never activated facial recognition on my Samsung device, nor fingerprint recognition, the price of entry into Shanghai was all of that information – all fingers and thumbs – “information acquired” as it says on the screen. My career as an international masterthief is over before it began. Who knows where that biometric info will all go, but the guy at the desk waves me through and I walk out into actual China for the first time – Hong Kong doesn’t count. I guess I’ll have to make the experience worth the information expense, and at least now I am not so concerned about switching facial or fingers on on my phone. They’ve got me now. Although thankfully I’ve got a big thick beard which means I might be able to go rogue if I shave. There are cameras EVERYWHERE. Every inch of ground is covered. Every molecule scrutinised.
First stop left luggage so I’m not having to carry all my devices around with me. The surveillance isn’t for our safety anyway. They don’t have to pretend it is like we do in the UK. She wants cash payment at left luggage as it is only 20 Yuan. At the time of writing, convert Yuan to pounds by shifting it up one decimal place. 20Y = £2. 100Y = £10. It’s not exact but it’s a good enough benchmark if you remember that it’s actually a bit more pounds in the end.
I go to the cash point. I’m tired. I’m in a very unfamiliar place, weird cash machine, working out the maths to convert currency, literally just got off the plane, using my Starling Card and can’t remember the PIN. I get it right but I’m still worrying when the machine chunters and opens a low drawer showing a load of pink notes. My alarm system is switched off at a time it should be on high. As the notes come out unfamiliarly, suddenly slamming into me to my left a guy in a suit, looking directly at the notes revealed, shouting something in Chinese. This is a practiced act. Could be anything. “Do you want your Starling Card?” I reflexively shake my head”No” to whatever he’s said, and won’t let him push me. I’ve already been conditioned to saying “no” here as the place is full of taxi drivers and most of us know how it is leaving the airport when you can’t pass as a native. I like to say I’m pretty on it with scams. I’ve done plenty of 360° spins over the years to see the person sneaking up on me and let them know the jig’s up, but this team is practiced on this particular cashpoint, looking for exactly me, and I only ever see one of them. I don’t pirouette when I should. It’s a theft team. Well oiled. The guy in the suit could be called “The Face”. He looks respectable. His job is to take all of my attention for a moment or two while “The Hand” steals what they are set up to steal, and usually immediately sends it to a third player, I dunno, “The Feet”? I’m kinda extrapolating from how I’ve seen it work or read it in all those books.
Smart distraction though. My instinct immediately was to protect the cash, which I of course did. But over here your card comes out AFTER the cash. And I didn’t notice they had it until they were all out of sight and I was still coming down from the shock of the shoutbarge. I had been in quiet contemplation. Prickles of cold sweat now. They have my card. I can’t get on the internet as it’s fucking China, but thankfully there’s a WiFi point more or less exactly behind me. You stick your passport on it and it gives you access to about 3 websites with a code for your phone, so long as your passport in the system. I’m in the system. One of the websites it allows happens to be my Starling app. Phew. Phew. Phew.
I freeze the card, still a bit freaked out. Literally ten seconds later, while the app is still open, it flashes that they’ve tried to make a contactless payment but it has been declined cos the card is frozen. Lucky lucky boy. Just in time for the tester charge somewhere nearby. I have two other cards, and in this modern world can likely bring my Monzo up on my phone once I’m in Japan. No harm done but a minor inconvenience and maybe they’ll try and steal my identity. So many cameras around though. Not here to do anything practical really. Just to remind everyone who’s in charge. I don’t involve the cops. That will end up wasting my whole layover just to fuck up some desperate people. Yeah sure desperate people who have decided that robbing those gaijin is the best way of making money but, you don’t save people with Chinese prison.
I give the left-luggage lady my bag and she takes a 15 yuan cash deposit. I very nearly put my passport in left luggage for safety. Don’t do that everyone!! This is an identity card culture. You have to carry the thing. Another near miss. I was asked a few times for it and might have hit trouble had I stashed it.
In some ways it is good to have an early reminder that I’m nothing like as streetwise as I like to think. London you’ll pick up a tail from time to time, or someone will come at you with a big loud need and you have to spin. But I have to harden. In general as well, I can be too trusting. Another lesson of the trip and I’m not even in Japan.
Annoying though it is to have lost my card, it’s totally ok. I tie my jumper around my waist for extra pocket cover plus it’s humid. I’m going to spend the rest of the day on high alert. It’s probably unnecessary mostly as these people are rarely blind opportunists – they have patches and routines. But that’s as maybe.
Then it’s the Maglev. On a short layover I see absolutely no reason not to take it. It’s just a few minutes into Longyang, at 301 kilometres an hour. Y80 return. That’s £8. Worth it just to experience the tech. I was on the second of the day. Virtually empty. Everyone in one section but me.
I exit Longyang briefly looking for coffee. It’s pretty Kings Cross around there, but there’s a chain called “luckin coffee” and they give me a Flat White. Y32. Back in and Metro 2 to East Nanjing Road – just Y4 for a single – about six stops and it is intuitively organised to a city dweller, with English on the signs. I had no issues buying a ticket or finding the right train. The shopping street is empty and it’s not my bag either, it’s basically Oxford Street with kanji. Good perhaps if you’re after a specific bit of tech at Jersey prices and you happen to be on a layover.
I wandered towards Yu Garden. I like to pound the streets in a new town, even if I now feel I have to watch every shadow. It’s exhausting keeping an eye out but I don’t pick up any negative attention and I’m not gonna lose the rest of my cards / my phone just for tourism.
I got to the garden just as it was about to open. I joined a queue and on the dot of nine we all went in. It was Y40 entry. It’s someone’s old garden. Rocks and old things but absolutely swamped in local tourism.
People EVERYWHERE.
This is China. If there are spirits they hide from the carnage in the day. Right at the heart of it there was a smidge of something other. An ancient theatre, a space a little calmer than the rock gardens, stage and tiers both roped off so you can just stand in the pit, but just as I arrived there, a cat sloped out into the stage and eyed us all in the way that only cats can. I felt a little shift in the air. Power here after all. Follow the cats, they know.
I left. That was the best the place was gonna muster.
Streets again, back through the harangue of the old town “Copy watch? Want a copy watch?” to The Bund – (were the Germans busy here?) No idea how much these copy watches are. Unless I’m gift shopping on purpose I try and avoid anyone who is actively trying to sell to me.
I spend a short time by the river among all the people the people the people. There aren’t many bridges over the Huangpu, so I go under it instead, and find a way to avoid the crowds at the same time via The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, a French style ghost train sound and light railway type nonsense that gets you where you’re going for Y50. It pops up in Pudong right by the TV tower after a bit of this and that. No locals on it. Suddenly absolutely still. Nevertheless with an empty carriage in front of me and another one behind me, they stacked me into the same one as two Russians just to make sure I couldn’t even have peace and quiet at 50 yuan.
Time is already ticking. I wander South, quite a long way, following my nose down the river. It’s twenty to twelve when I stumble on the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel, and wander in. I’m hungry, I find myself reasoning, and I’ve got yuan to spend. They direct me to the second floor Merchant Kitchen where, starting at noon, there’s an all you can eat cold buffet. I think with loads more time I would have eaten pretty much anywhere else, but I was starting to feel the pull of the airport and it was easy there so I went for it.
Unlimited booze and food for Y338. I gave them 400. Forty quid. Pricey but if I don’t spend these yuan they’ll just turn into paper when I leave. And it was a decent spread in a pleasant surrounding. Unidentifiable bits of fish and cuts of meat. Lovely big prawns in abundance. Crab claws, all a bit dry, and a selection of sushi – much of which I’ve never tried.
I only notice the pudding when I’m heading out the door and down in order to ask the concierge for a cab back to East Nanjing Road. At my request he shows me on his phone how much the cab should cost. In my pre trip research I get the feeling the cabbies like to take the piss with gaijin, so I prepare the right ballpark plus a few yuan, and sit silent until we get there, looking out the window. I hand him the notes with finality and am pleased when he does the pantomime for “Oh I should find some change for you,” which I wave away. Satisfactory on both sides. I’m back at Nanjing. Y40. Might have been cheaper but to be fair it was a long ride.
Busier than it was, but no time for shopping. I take the metro back, and then the maglev. It almost certainly would have been cheaper and quicker to cab from the Marriott to Longyang but with the damn internet and GPS blocked it just feels the logical and correct safety procedure retracing my steps. I wandered off piste when I wasn’t hungry on reaching the TV Tower:
By and large the interactions I’ve had in Shanghai have been positive. There’s a direct and stern character to the people in general, but this is a very crowded authoritarian society. Rules matter here. I was nervous crossing the road in the wrong place as my research didn’t go as far as determining if there’s jaywalking laws. Thankfully the green man system is well organised – it’s a much better city for walking than many of the American ones. I covered plenty of ground. I’ve got a snapshot now of the smells and sounds.
Rice and spit. Birds still, sometimes caged but often free – sparrows in the trees. Electric mopeds tooting their horns to be heard. Crowds. I saw one butterfly…
By the time I get back to left luggage I’m tired. Y5 to get the bag back making just 20 in total and it’s all still there. I cast around for the cash point shoutythief. Now he’s had it declined I’m thinking I’ll tell him I dropped my card near here this morning and will pay Y100 if anyone can find it, then wait ten minutes. But he’s not there, and it’s not at lost property. So, back through security and it’s Japan time coming right up.
Y670 plus £5 to replace my Starling card when I’m home. A day in Shanghai without counting the cost, less than seventy quid by my imperfect currency conversion system. Either way less than £100. I’m fine with that. I can’t imagine I’ll be back any time soon, but I guess you never know with life, right?
Thank the lord I spent ages with the map and thinking yesterday or that would have been a confusing and frustrating day in a confusing and frustrating place.
AlBarclay 