Gloria and I walked around Xin Tian
Di and met Huiling there for dinner. Xin
Tian Di is an old area of Shanghai that has been remodeled into small shops, restaurants,
and bistros. The traditional
architecture, especially the shikumen ("stone gate") houses
on narrow alleys, has been maintained for the most part, at least on the
outside. The primary places of note are
the old site of the Provisional
Government of the Republic of Korea, which was the partially recognized government-in-exile
of Korea, based in Shanghai when Korea was a Japanese colony, and the
house where the first Chinese Communist Party congress was held in July 1921. It is lively in the quiet urban way I think
of as the meeting place of the “beautiful people.” It is an affluent and car-free locality. We saw many foreigners and I heard German,
English, and American being spoken.
After a magnificent dinner, which
included a fish so fresh that the waiter brought it to the table still alive to
show us before it was cooked and several Shanghai cuisine specialties, we
walked to the Bund. There we discovered
a fireworks display to celebrate mid-autumn festival across the river. I took several shots, then, because inadvertently
I have been turning on the video camera function of my phone, I captured the
movement of a ship traveling along the river with lights picking out its
rigging. I will try to figure out how to
post it.
The Bund has that feeling of
history and romance. The old buildings,
still mostly banks, are treasures of 19th architecture and preserved
as such. It felt odd taking pictures in
color because most of the photographs I have seen of the Bund were in black and
white (historical treasures). It was a pleasant
walk, but windy and just on the edge of being chilly. It was so warm all day that I did not have
even the lightest jacket with me.
Then we walked back through Nanjing
Road and back to the hotel.
