Zapata’s Taco-Tuesday

We had seen the advertisement about Zapata’s having Taco-Tuesday’s, heh quite obviously, every Tuesday evening from 6 to 9 PM. This means with 88 RMB you get buffet table for different kinds of fillings for tortillas. There were five different kind of warm meat and vegetable fillings and then different kinds of veggies, salsas, sauces, cheese, etc. to fill-up your tortilla’s. The food in general was good and we did eat quite a lot. But to be honest 88 RMB is way too much about that kind of food in bar in Shanghai. With this amount you can have a proper meal in good restaurant and actually enjoy your meal while discussing your friends. Like already said, food is good and if you are really graving for tortillas then this is right spot for you but otherwise I would go somewhere else. Drinks are also too expensive, or what do you say for 40 RMB for a coke?

Shanghai Antique market

Last weekend it was time to find the Shanghai Antique market place which had good reviews on couple of guide books. Got to say that this was the biggest disappointment so far in any guide book. The actual market was clearly only for tourists and included either same stuff they are selling you on any tourist bazaar or then clear junk which wasn’t even maintained properly. One time was enough for this. The market is in Xintiadi district and there are clearly marked entrans both from Zizhong road and Xizang road.

Cute piece of Spain in Shanghai - Lunch at De Bellottas

When looking through SmartShanghai-guide there are several lunch promotions every day. Yesterday I decided to choose Spanish De Bellotas which is located in Xintiadi, aka. very close to my place with less than 15 min walking.

The lunch set was 50 RMB including salad, main dish and one drink. Already the outside of the restaurant is very cute, opening up into a small alley. Sun was shining today and it was nice and warm so there was couple of tables carried outside. I decided to go and sit inside to look around the place more carefully. Also the interior was small, maybe 8 tables in total but oh my gosh how cute it was!

The waitresses spoke good English and I was immediately noticed when I walked in. The lunch menu wasn’t that large but from my experience when restaurants focus only on couple things, those couple of things are done extremely well. This was the case also here. For the main dish I ended up with creamy chicken and mushroom pasta. All I can say that the pasta was perfectly prepared and the fact that I could see the preparation in front of me due to the open kitchen only brought value for the experience. The salad was very basic green salad but they are using their own mixture of balsamic and I guess at least there’s some sweet onion along. Anyway the balsamic was extremely tasty. On top of all the waitresses were wearing pig-shaped hoops in their ears which I find charming detail. This is a place where I will definitely return!

Congo River exhibition at Shanghai Museum

My reason to return to Shanghai museum on Friday was the opening of the River Congo Exhibition. The exhibition is done in cooperation with some Paris African museum and is open in Shanghai now until June 2013. The exhibition is located on the top floor of Shanghai Museum with clearly visible signs.

 Even though I was waiting the River Congo so eagerly I was mildly disappointed for the exhibition mainly due to the fact I have visited Brussels’ Africa Museum which is absolutely magnificent and has set the limit high for me. This one in Shanghai included only some man-figures and masks and in general the exhibition was really small compared to the PR campaign there has been done for it. The info signs next to the items however were well done and explained the history with interesting details.

Shanghai museum

Last Thursday was a public holiday here so also the writer decided to have a smallish holiday from blogging. Since the holiday was on Thursday, according to some weird Chinese habit also Friday was holiday for most people and the school/work from Friday was changed to Sunday (yesterday). Weird indeed… The holiday was the Sweeping the Tombs, as it was nicely translated into English. The idea is families going and cleaning the tombs of their relatives on the courtyards.

My great plan was to visit small towns Suzhou and Hangzou which are both located rather near Shanghai during the long weekend but of course Thursday and Friday were raining and it was foggy everywhere. That’s it for the great plan. So instead of acquainting myself with nearby cities I decided to get to know better for Shanghai. The plan included Shanghai museum with all its exhibitions.

The museum itself is located on the southern end of people’s park. It is open every day, excluding Mondays and public holidays, and it is totally free for everyone to visit. The building is also quite a piece of art with its 5 floors. There seems to be also great lines of people getting in all the time.

The museum includes several sections, mostly focusing into China of course. I went through all the sections and my personal favorites were The Chinese painting area and Ceramic area.

All in all the museum was rather interesting but I definitely took too large bite going through all the sections in one day (excluding the River Congo). I should have choose couple of areas and focus on those. Even though I now also spent several hours wandering around, it wasn’t that enjoyable and in some point I realized I had become quite dull for the new things. This was of course  a shame since the collections are quite large and well presented. But still I do recommend this place. Gives good picture about China, though, I don’t really know why the name is Shanghai Museum since there are no particularly Shanghai oriented items 

Salmon suit

Money money money - Try to put these into your pocket

Course platter in SHU - Study overflow

A bit more about my University studies. So first of all, I am studying in Business program and Chinese language until mid-May and after that only Chinese language 20 hours per week until July.

I had a huge problem of choosing which courses are interesting and which ones to take since all of those sounded good. My solution? I decided to go to all first lectures and then deciding which ones to choose. Result? All of those are still interesting so I am sticking with all of these. 

Class schedule

So my current course are:

Chinese Business Law: I have already taken the basics of Finnish business law so this one sounded definitely good course. And it surely is. The teacher is good and tells lots of examples about how to do business in China also asking how is the situation in Finland. Sometimes these lead into interesting side discussions, for example whether to have a holding company in China, Hong Kong or in British Virgin Islands.

Computer Networks: Basic course of digital networks, for example how 2G, 3G, GSM, Wi-Fi networks and internet are built. Basic level but includes also much of technical info.

Digital Communication systems: The development of communication system. How different kind of . Quite technical topic and needs some background info to understand.

E-Commerce: E-markets development focusing especially on China. On the first lecture we listened Justin Bieber J This course is together with French, German and Dutch students and the teacher is, krrhhm, expecting very little from us.

Chinese Culture: Chinese history and culture. Explains since the very very beginning the development of China. Very useful! Teacher knows a lot and makes good comparison to Europe from the era’s to clear examples.

Chinese Economics: This course focuses on how the modern China has built together. The beginning of course we focused on surviving the communist era and how the re-building process was carried out. Current topics are for example on the FDI development and how the Chinese markets currently operate. For me this very interesting and one of my favorite courses.

Chinese Language: Heh you can’t study in China without studying Chinese. 9 hours per week is efficient and the inspiring teacher gives a lot input. Like already stated in some of my previous post I totally like this!

Lesson outside

Homework for Chinese

These all takes in total around 35 hours of school per week (which is much for an exchange student I know) until that mid-May and afterwards 20 hours per week. In total this spring gives me around 50 ECTS which is actually more than I would normally get from my home Uni. Let’s see where I can put all of these courses in my study plan.

Lucky number five

Had to make a quick post.

My first homework on blackboard :)

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How to get from A to B? Public transportation in Shanghai

Even though the city itself is extremely large and there are several things that don’t work, public transportation is not one of these things. The large network of buses, metros, taxis, ferries and trains cover almost every single part of the city. Especially inside the ring circle of metro line 4 you need to walk maximum 10 minutes to reach a metro station.

Metro:

There are 12 metro lines currently on the Shanghai Metro system but it is also constantly developed and in year 2020 it should contain already 22 lines. Metro stations are easy to find and accessible. There are large signs showing where the stations are from couple of blocks area. 

Metro sign

Some biggest lines; Line 4 is a circle line. Line 2 goes from Airport - to airport so crossing the whole city from east to west. Line 1 is the second biggest line after line 2 going from North to South. And the biggest changing point in the city is People Square, always crowded with the crossing point of 3 lines (1,2 and 8).

Even though this is also the main transportation system for locals, the metros are probably the cleanest ones I have ever seen. Taking this and the fact that metros go every 2 or 3 minute (in rush hour every 1 minute) throughout the whole day makes moving the large masses very efficient.

The rush hours are 7.30-9.30 AM and 6-7.30 PM. In these times you might need to wait the second metro to arrive to fit in but normally this will do. One trip less than 10 km costs 3 RMB and after that every 10 KM is worth 1 RMB. For example from the Pudong airport metro to People square it is 7 RMB. There are some minor exceptions but the maximum for one trip journey is 10 RMB.

Buses:

Public bus

I don’t have that much experience from these since in most of the buses there are not English signs about the names of the bus stops. So even though these cover the city extremely well you need to be able to understand your destination in Chinese to hop off on the right stop, unless of course you know exactly in which stop to hop off.

Bus stop

 Taxi:

Taxis are cheap and if you have your address in Chinese they will most likely get you there without any further instructions. There are around 80 000 Taxis in Shanghai so you have faire changes to get one of those in any point of the day. Normally you need to wait maximum 5 minutes even in the worst rush hour to get a taxi from the street. And the easiest way is exactly from the street. Almost all of the taxi companies acclaim they have English speaking staff through 24/7 but it is much harder to get the address right in Chinese via phone than showing it to the driver.

 In general taxi drivers are very polite, always use meter and don’t accept tipping. Actually I talked with one taxi driver longer and heard quite interesting stories about their customer service requirements. For example taxi drivers always need to look neat and use white glows. Customer can also in any point of the journey ask the driver to open/close windows turn on/off the radio, etc (this is still normal). They always need to greet customer, offering the recipe without asking etc. The list is very long and if they unfill any of these requirements the customer can basically call the taxi company and leave the taxi without paying the trip. The better the taxi drivers are, the more stars there are in their placates inside the taxi. Already receiving one star is very difficult but I managed to find a 3-star driver. With him I had no problems to get to my destination, even though the place I was going was located in to a really small alley.

There are 7 different colors of taxis in Shanghai and the color of the taxi marks the taxi company. The most reliable ones and which I always use are turquoise and white taxis. These are both private companies which can operate in the whole city area.

Some of the companies can only operate in certain areas and naturally with them you can get to the other side of the city.

Red taxi is something to avoid. This is public company and their drivers don’t have any qualifications. When hearing stories, even though taxi scams are rear, they always seem to happen for red taxi customers.

The prices for taxis are same in each company. 

The basic fare at the daytime is 14 RMB and it includes 3 km journey, after this it is 2 RMB per kilometer until 10 km. And after 10 km journey it is 1 RMB per kilometer. At night time (11PM – 5 AM) the starting fare is 18 RMB again with 3 kilometers and then 3 RMB per kilometer.

All taxis give you the printed taxi recipe. It is wise to save this since in case you forgot something to taxi you can call to the company which number is in the recipe and might even receive your belongings (I wasn’t this lucky but you might be).

Ferries:

Since Shanghai is built along the river, you also might need to cross the river Huangpu to get to the other side, either Bund or Pudong. If you don’t want to take metro under the river or just want to enjoy the river for a while, the river ferries are very convenient. Price for one crossing is only 0,5 RMB for pedestrians and the ferries go every 15 minute.

Trains:

There are two main train stations in Shanghai, North and South Stations, both along circle line metro 4. And through these stations goes all the long distance transportation. Mainly when you want to go south you go south station and vice versa. Tickets can be bought in the station maximum 3 days before departure or then from the China Railway kiosks which are located everywhere in the city. The staff doesn't speak English so better take dictionary with and your destination written in Chinese as the dates you wish to travel.  Also the long term buses leave from these terminals. 

Best part of all? They all connected together into a same network. Buy the public transportation card from any metro stations and you can use it in all of these means. The card costs 20 RMB (which will be reimbursed to you when returning it) and you can download as much credit as you want in all metro stations. Extremely convenient even though you don’t get any discount using the card compared to the normal single journey ride (like for example the Oyster card in London) but it is still worth to get the card instead of buying the tickets in every single time with coins

Public transportation card

All means which this is accepted listed below

Any questions? Use the comment box below