First Day in Shanghai - In Search of Enchanted Experiences

      We were tired and went to bed shortly after returning to our room. However, because of the twelve-hour time difference between home and China, I found myself wide awake at midnight. I managed to get a little more sleep, but not much. Adjusting to the new time would take a while. Breakfast was included, so we headed to the dining room for our first breakfast buffet among many. This was one of the better buffets, and luckily, we weren’t sharing the space with a large tour group that day. The buffet featured many Chinese dishes like noodles and cooked vegetables, along with plain rice porridge, eggs, and a small selection of cereals, which reflected my usual breakfast at home. Most importantly, there was an espresso machine, although it didn’t serve lattes. I was always curious about the other guests. Their composition changed as we traveled through the country. In this hotel, the other guests seemed to be overseas Chinese or other Asians. We met our guide Simon in the lobby and walked out to our waiting car as part of our tour. Simon made a great first impression—he was professional, and his English was flawless. It was a short drive to our first destination. The Bund is located on the west side of the Huangpu River, which flows north through Shanghai, dividing the city into Puxi (west of the river) and Pudong (east of the river). Throughout most of this tour, we learned about events from centuries past, but Shanghai’s history is more recent. We stood where there was just a muddy lane in 1842 until the British demanded an area for settlement and trade following the first Opium War. We looked across the river to Pudong and the North Bund. The skyline was striking even on this cloudy day. The area features some of the tallest buildings in the world, all constructed since the 1990s when Pudong was designated a special economic zone. We truly appreciated these changes as this was not our first time in Shanghai. We had been in the same spot in January 1985 during a long train trip to China that Po and I took with our mothers. Back then, we were living in Botswana. One day, Po mentioned wanting to take her mother to China since they had both grown up in Hong Kong and had never visited mainland China. I chimed in with, “What about my mother?” We flew out from Gaborone in December 1984, picked up my mom in Pennsylvania and Po's mom in Calgary, and flew to Hong Kong in early January. Those were the early days of independent travel to China. All our bookings had to go through the China International Travel Service (CITS). They could book only one city at a time, so we reserved a hotel in Guangzhou and the train tickets to get there. Once in Guangzhou, we visited the local CITS office and arranged our flight to Beijing. Thankfully, this was our only internal flight. It was quite memorable, especially the chaos when the check-in counter opened, and in all the commotion, our CITS representative emerged with our boarding passes. The plane was a Tupolev, an old Russian model. The seats were thin, so I could feel the back of the passenger in front of me as he tried to recline his seat, which was blocked by my knees as I desperately attempted to maintain some space. This repeated for the next three hours. He couldn’t understand why his seat wouldn’t recline. Po's cousin in Beijing had arranged for us to stay in an apartment. In early January, the apartment was cold and dark, prompting my mother to insist that we find a hotel. I didn’t argue. The next morning, we went to China Travel and they helped us secure a hotel in Beijing. They also booked our sleeper train tickets to our next destination, Xian, along with accommodations there. We repeated this process in every city, booking our next hotel and onward travel. We all paid a premium for our train tickets compared to local prices. Po and her mother paid an overseas Chinese rate, while my mother and I paid an even higher premium. I wasn't bothered by this since, back then, local salaries were a fraction of western ones, and train fares were inexpensive. I have some old photographs originally taken as slides by my mother, my wife, and me. Shanghai looked drab in January 1985; Pudong was just shipyards and farmland. These photos were taken looking across Suzhou Creek. The ornate building is the Russian Consulate, which still stands. In April 2026, I didn’t see the same sign. After the Communists took power in 1949, the banks and trading businesses on the Bund were abandoned and the buildings repurposed, which is what we observed on that dreary January day in 1985. Everything has reverted since the 1990s, and the buildings on the Bund have once again become businesses and upscale

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