Shanghai is every inch the major city and has been a major trading hub for centuries. I centred myself around the main shopping area called Nanjing road which leads down to the art deco waterfront street called the Bund. The Bund is great fun for wandering around during the day and is a mecca for tourists who like to get snapped with the Shanhai skyline in the background. It reminded me a lot of Hong Kong in that respect.

 

I was getting a bit ticked off with Chinese food at this point and so I discovered a great little Japanese ramen place but more about ramen in the Japan section. The problem with Chinese food is that it's set up for banquets of more than one person. Any time I ordered ribs or soup or anything I would receive a quantity of food that was enough to feed 5 people.You can imagine how frustrating that can be, meal after meal, when you are sitting on your own. Also Chinese people are incredibly noisy when they eat. Everything is sucked up or slurped with gusto. Multiply that by 50 diners and it can be quite off putting. Thats just their culture though I suppose, who am I to judge?

 

As I said earlier, I lost my camera after a night drinking with some Spanish businessmen who were working for a paint company. In Shanghai you can drink 24 hours a day and it was bright daylight by the time I finally got home, cameraless.

It's a real shame because earlier in the evening, I'd made the acquaintance of a nightclub owner called Sammi Wang and taken some nice pictures. She spoke very good English and was explaining to me how frustrated she was that her new bar ( which we were sat in) was not pulling in the customers. I suggested that she change the music which was a bit too dance oriented. She immediately obliged and got the DJ to change what he was playing. Then we got onto the arrangement of the furniture in the place and eventually what happened was that she had all her staff re-arranging the furniture to my requirements including lifting settees down flights of stairs etc. This is all at 2am on a Friday night. Completely surreal but I loved it. Hope the bar is bringing in the customers now Sammi !

 

I then decided that I'd had enough of cities and that I wanted to experience a holiday Chinese style. I took an overnight boat from Shanghai to the Buddhist retreat of Putuoshan. It's an absolutely gorgeous place with monasteries, beaches, massive water lily ponds and dried fish shops. It really is picture postcard China, except for the dried fish shops which have tens of different varieties of dried fish and lizards etc. The smell of these places was unbearable to me but I assume it's a delicacy in China.

 

The island itself is quite small with a tiny main town which has no bars, just fish shops and shops selling religious artifacts including buddhist monk costumes. Their were lots of monks walking around the place since the island has a special reverence to some female deity in chinese buddhism. Chinese people go their to pay their respects to this deity. It was difficult to find out anything since no one really spoke any English.

 

There were very few western tourists although I did meet two great Aussie girls, Sian and Natalie who taught me an unbelievably dangerous drinking game which I love and am now passing it off as my own. We were taking shots of this chinese firewater, which on reflection was probably paintstripper, seeing as none of us could understand the characters on the labels. I've never been so hungover in my life. These girls can drink. I'm a bit jealous of the girls since they were heading on to Beijing to catch the trans siberian express to Moscow. Thats my next trip if I can get away with it!

 

The food on Putuoshan is some of the best food I've ever had anywhere in the world. It was different from most chinese food I've had in the past, very simple and extremely tasty. The girls and I went for dinner in this place that looked like someones living room. No one could understand us and Sian was in the kitchen with the woman trying to point out some foods that she could cook for us. All to no avail. Someone eventually sent down the street for a girl who could speak some English to us and translate to the cook. What transpired was an absolute delight, some eggs with tomatoes, green beans with garlic and aubergines cooked with dumplings. Amazing. And at around 5 pounds for the three of us. Magic.

 

I loved the island of Putuoshan. It was tranquil and welcoming after all those cities. I would recommend the place to anyone who wants to get away somewhere serene. There isn't much to do though.

 

Almost forgot..... I know what it is like to be famous. Chinese people in Putuoshan dont see much westerners and so they are fascinated by you and are staring at you all the time. It's very strange. Even the monks on the beach were coming up to me and trying to have a conversation with their four words of English. Quite nice in a way but I definitely would not like that to happen to me all the time. I can understand why some movie stars lose the plot sometimes.