Pudong, XinTianDi, The Bund, and Fireworks
October 4th, 2008On Saturday we took in the more commercial sights: Pudong, XinTianDi, and the Bund, where they had a fireworks display for China’s National Day (and so kept Pudong lit up past the normal 11:00p lights-out time). There are plenty of great photos of Pudong and such on the web (click the links above), but what you don’t see are all the construction cranes. With all the construction in Dubai, London, and China, I think renting construction cranes must be a good business to be in right now.
At XinTianDi, we had a beer at the Paulaner Brewery, which was a slightly surreal experience after just leaving Oktoberfest in Munich — the same brewery as our Oktoberfest tent, the same Bavarian costumes but worn by Chinese staff, beer in pint glasses instead of liters, and the dirndls suffering similar capacity issues, as a witty friend noted.
We went to Glamour Bar and then another recommendation across the street called Jean Georges. Glamour Bar was crowded and got even more crowded as the night went on — we thought we might bring down the tone with our T-shirts and jeans, but there were guys in there wearing shorts. Shanghai seems fairly casual about dress codes. Jean Georges was empty, but was slightly more pleasant than Glamour Bar, which is a little tatty, like Tableaux in Tokyo’s Daikanyama — you get the feeling it’s been around a while. The bar at Jean Georges doesn’t have a view of Pudong, though, so can’t really compete.