DJ’s high school graduation and transition to college is fast approaching. While he seems to be “all-in” on NYU Shanghai, we still jumped at the chance to visit Shanghai for their Admitted Students Weekend. We felt this was a good way to see the city together in a “safe” environment with us and raise any concerns now.
Given how long it takes to get to Shanghai, we really didn’t want to go for a just a weekend. Instead, we made it a nine day trip so we could play tourist and scope out a few things prior to the university event.
Shanghai is huge and we only scraped the surface of it. The city is the size of the State of Delaware with a population as large as all of Australia. It has a few less metro stops as NYC but nearly double the amount of track distance. It took us nearly 2 hours on metro from Pudong Airport (PVG) to Oriental Sports Center Station, which is the closest to NYU Shanghai, yet only cost about $1 USD each.
Exploring Shanghai
We set about using the first few days in Shanghai to explore. We wanted to both see some of the sights, visit some places that might be useful or DJ once he starts school, and give him the chance to lead the way, navigating Shanghai Metro and streets.
The first day we walked about 15 miles! We walked from our hotel, The Shang by Artyzen Qiantan Shanghai, across the street from NYU Shanghai campus, up to the student dorms, about 40 minutes or so to the north. From there, we walked on to the Expo Culture Park which was hosting part of the Shanghai International Flower Show while we were in town. This would make various parts of the city just mobbed with people on multiple occasions. While at the park, we walked along the Huangpu River which was just loaded with container ships and oil tankers running up and down the river. Then we wandered back to NYU campus, stopping for lunch along the way. It was still early when we got back to the hotel so we walked on, about 45 minutes south to Old Sanlin Street, one of many “ancient towns” found around Shanghai.
Our second day featured a ton of walking as well, with a bit over 10 miles of walking on the day. We started our day out visiting Tianshan Tea Market (a wholesale tea market – find it in Amap) before heading to Jing’an Buddhist Temple. Dating to 247 AD and moved to this site in 1216 AD, the temple features plenty of statues as well as people tossing coins up onto the silver statue of Buddha Rudra for luck. Be sure to watch for flying coins when walking nearby.
From there we walked on to People’s Park and inadvertently stumbled into the Shanghai Marriage Market. Here, parents of unmarried children advertise them in hopes of finding a suitable partner. There seemed to be hundreds of people setup in a large section off the park with their signs. We couldn’t imagine doing this for DJ but these are apparently common across China.
We rounded out the day with a walk down the three mile long Nanjing Pedestrian Street (think NYC Times square without cars for 3+ miles), a walk along the Bund Sightseeing Platform for views across the river, walking across the Garden Bridge over the Suzhou Creek, and a visit to 1933 Laoyangfang (find it on Amap), an old slaughterhouse known for its unique design.
Our third day started out with a visit to T12 Lab in an attempt to help DJ locate places for good whole bean coffee, something not common in grocery stores (oddly, neither is tea). From there, we walked south to an outdoor mall across the street from Longhua Temple (which we didn’t visit). The reason for this visit was to help DJ find a good climbing gym at a reasonable distance from NYU Shanghai. This one is about 30 min walking/metro from both campus and the dorms. We made a morning of it, climbing together.
After climbing at Stonehaven Gym we crossed back over the Huangpu River (by metro), heading to the Shanghai Financial District. We had hoped to buy tickets for later in the day or the following for Shanghai Tower. Surprisingly, it was a slow day and we were able to buy tickets and go up immediately.
Shanghai Tower is the third highest skyscraper in the world after Burj Khalifa in Dubai and Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur (which we will see in December). It features the worlds fastest elevator and a dual layer flexible glass curtain exterior.
We were able to visit both the observation deck (floors 118 and 119) and the buildings counterweight, aka the worlds heaviest tuned damper (floor 126) to see it in action and experience a small light show. The damper weighs in at 1,000 tons to minimize the building side to side movements.
Our fourth day started with a metro ride up to 1,000 Trees. This is a unique architectural design for a mall with hundreds of man-made “flower pots” holding trees and shrubs on top of it. It sits along Suzhou Creek with wonderful walking trails along both sides. It seems the design was so much of a success that Phase II is under construction next door.
From there we went to explore the French Concession. The French style architecture dates back to a time when this part of Shanghai was claimed by France. Today, we found it a bit disappointing as its nothing but shops with cheap Chinese souvenirs and low quality tea. We found it surprising to learn there was an American Concession at one time too.
We rounded out the day with a walk over to Yuyuan Garden (aka Yu Garden). The garden itself is a beautiful series of rock gardens, pavilions, ponds, trees, and flowers. We enjoyed the formal garden itself, although it was overrun with tourists. However, it sits along side the Yuyuan Tourist Mart – a Disney-esq, manufactured “ancient town” full of overpriced souvenir shops, copycat foods, and western brands (for example: McDonalds). This is one spot we wouldn’t voluntarily return to.
Our last two days, before Admitted Students weekend, were focused on museums and gardens. We visited the Shanghai Museum near Peoples Square and saw exhibits on the 19th Century Qipao and carved cups from rhinoceros horn.
We also visited the much better, Shanghai History Museum with a great exhibit comparing Shanghai and Korean housing culture (though this part had no English signage).
The Shanghai Art Museum in an old convention center, on the Pudong side, featured modern art from local university students.
One of the most interesting visits was the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center (PPAC) featuring posters from the first half of the 20th Century. Most posters were focused on transitioning and building up a modern China, though a few, of course, were anti-western posters.
Lastly, we visited the Shanghai Botanical Gardens where we strolled for about two hours among the various types of gardens within.
NYU Shanghai Admitted Students Weekend
The university set up a great weekend for admitted students, though there were far fewer student attendees than we anticipated. There were only 16 who made it in for the weekend. To some degree this makes sense in hindsight. Chinese students had yet to sit for the Gaokao, so there were none in attendance. For all others, this is a long/expensive trip to take, especially for a two day visit. By our count it was about a 50/50 mix of students who were still on the fence and students who had already given their acceptance. While most were from the United States, there were others from Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Philippines, and Thailand.
The Admitted Students Weekend program mixed cultural activities (paper cutting, dumpling making, tai chi), presentations, various other activities, and presentations from the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Dean of Students David Pe, Chancellor Tong Shijun, and Provost Bei Wu. Parents had a few sessions to themselves, including a tour of Shanghai while students experience sample classes and curated experiences across the city as well.
On the first night of the weekend the NYU Shanghai team loaded everyone on busses to docks along the Huangpu River, near the base of the Oriental Pearl, for an evening riverside cruise. This hour long cruise up and down the river was a great opportunity to continue talking to university staff as well as the student guides/volunteers who came along. It was a beautiful evening that really showcased how amazing the city looks at night.
At the end of the second day of Admitted Students Weekend we all boarded buses for Yu Gardens. While this spot certainly isn’t our favorite, it was still a wonderful capstone to the weekend, as we had a private dinner, heard presentations from three students about their experience at NYU Shanghai, and had an opportunity to say goodbye to the gracious team.
Notes for Visiting Shanghai
- Shanghai is huge. Plan on it taking an hour or more by subway to get virtually anywhere you want to go. It’s well worth it, but it takes time.
- Use Amap instead of Google Maps. Google Maps is very poor, with out of date listings, and worse, everything is off by 50 to 500 meters due to a different coordinate system than the rest of the world.
- You MUST setup Alipay, and maybe WeChat Pay. We used Alipay virtually everywhere and only rarely used WeChat Pay. Set these up BEFORE you leave the United States (or your home country).
- Visa is accepted for Shanghai Metro with tap to pay. The most expensive trip was $1 USD per person, and that was a two hour ride between Oriental Sports Center and Pudong Airport. Most of our sightseeing trips were $0.44 or $0.59 per person.
- We used none of the Yuan we brought with us. I’m not saying don’t bring any, but China is mainly cashless at this point. We were warned that even if you use cash you are unlikely to get change as few merchants have any.