I decided to make a trip over to Century Park during Golden Week, I don’t normally go over to the wilderness (Pudong) unless I’m catching a flight or err… arriving on a flight so I figured I’d better go and see what all the fuss was about. Actually, when I say “decided to make a trip” what I mean is that my friend kept dropping successively less subtle hints about wanting to go over the course of two days (while I simultaneously dropped very unsubtle hints about NOT wanting to go) until I gave in and took her there for an afternoon.
It started badly on the metro, both lines 1 and 2 were almost as busy as the 8am rush hour on a Monday morning, we squeezed on though and things quietened down after Lujiazui (pronounced Loo-Jar-Zooey apparently). We paid our way into the park and immediately tried to hire a bike and then a boat but everything was already hired out and the queues were huge so we gave up and took off on foot. The park was packed and we pretty much had to resort to walking on the grass because the pathways were a heaving mass of bicycles / tandems / tridems? / electric cars / pedal cars / pedestrians / rollerbladers / wedding photo parties, all slowly manouvering around each other.
I quickly came to the conclusion that it’s called Century Park because visiting there more than once every hundred years is more than anyone can bear.
Actually, despite the crowds we still had fun there and met up with a couple of friends wrestling with a tandem on the crowded paths. The evening ended predictably, at a bar (in Pudong no less), drunk and singing, actually virtually screaming, along to 80’s rock belted out by a Phillippino band.
Anyway, here’s a few random photos from the day:
There’s always Chinglish!
Ethnic Chinese in traditional clothing
Weird “It’s a knockout” type sets
Huge topiary
Children learning all about driving in Shanghai
Barbecue Entrepeneur – actually located outside the park and selling barbecue skewers to people who hired boats! Only in China do you queue for an hour for a boat and then sail across to the barbecue man and waste 10 minutes waiting while he cooks your food.
