After a decent lie in, we were up and out to go and visit a local temple: Jade Buddha Temple.
We went via a little fruit shop for pre breakfast snacks and then stopped at a place for brunch – we were actually hunting for an elusive bakery, never to be found.
The brunch place had lots of little stalls in one area and everyone had a smorgasbord of random (mediocre) things. The boys started their day with chips, because it’s holiday and I don’t care to argue.
Jade Buddah temple is a large complex with multiple rooms, and it is one of the city’s few active monasteries.
It was built in 1882 but destroyed in the cultural revolution, good old Mao, and rebuilt afterwards. The temple is home to several famous Buddhas, such as The Seated Buddah at 6ft tall and carved from a single piece of white jade, decorated with over 100 emeralds and other gems.
The reclining Buddah, depicting the Buddha’s peaceful passing into nirvana and the main hall, which houses walls of decorative golden statues and the 20 unique ‘Heavenly Deities’.
The kids were mostly bothered about a room dedicated to a family of kittens and their mother, they even had their own aircon. Can’t knock it, I would have absolutely been the same at that age 🐱
After the temple we got a taxi to an area called Tianzifang in the French Concession part of town.
Tianzifang consists of a labyrinth of “lilong” (lane neighborhoods) built in a style known as shikumen (meaning “stone warehouse gate”). These are unique to Shanghai, but similar to the hutongs in Beijing.
It is a maze of little cute connected alleyways, lined with shops and bars and restaurants. Bo managed to find Pokemon cards and Soph bought her 75th cap.
Everyone was started to get a bit melty and lacklustre from the heat – it was about 37* today, but real feel is about 45* – and so we ensconced in a bar (randomly happened to be owned by a nice guy from Nottingham) had cold drinks, played cards (7s) and appreciated the aircon.
After that, Crickett joined Oliver and Tim in getting a cold/fever, so we dosed her up alongside them, and carried on our merry way.
Next stop, Yu Gardens. But not before Jonathan’s taxi took the boys in completely the wrong direction, over the other side of the river to Pudong, before they returned back to us 40mins later. I took the kids to McDonalds for ease of icecreams, aircon and toilets while we waited. The ice cream was so far removed from anything that would be considered dairy ice cream back home.
We mooched about Yu Garden area, over the famous zig zag bridge, round the ornate streets, watched the fish and had some dinner.
We ate in any old place we found that could fit us in. It was fine. We had an array of stuff to share and it was about £30.
There are tons of young (and some older) Chinese tourists getting fully professionally dressed up in traditional clothes, hair and makeup to have a photo shoot by the bridge (and most anywhere really). There was one mall we stumbled upon which was solely boutiques doing this service, with all the gowns and makeup artists etc inside each store. Didn’t see any of that last time I was in China.
We finished off by walking back along the river to The Bund, taking in the lights and the atmosphere before heading back to the hotel (directly this time, not my standard deviation from route) via our new favourite fruit shop for a bedtime snack.
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