Shanghai Day 3 - Longhua Temple (龙华寺) & French Concession Area

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24 Feb 2009

Woke up early today to meet the Prof at the hospital. It turned out to be a really quick 3 minute meeting as he was extremely busy. Right after that, I was going to meet a friend for lunch over at a new technology park at the outskirts of the city. Being early, I decided to stop by the Longhua Temple (龙华寺) -- legend has it that it was first built in 242 CE by Sun Quan, emperor of Wu during the Three Kingdoms Period. But the current sole pagoda was built during the Song dynasty.

The hospital in the morning


Taking the metro out to Longcao Lu station. Longhua Temple is about 15 mins walk from there.


Crossing an overhead bridge to the temple across the road


A look at the sole "ancient" pagoda from the bridge


Characters at the base of the pagoda. Sanskrit perhaps?


Entrance to main temple complex behind the pagoda


First courtyard


Middle courtyard


I think these are the 500 Luohans





The Four Heavenly Kings


The Grand Hall of the Great Sage


Goddess of Mercy


This should be the Three Sages Hall, Amitabha and two other bodhisattvas


I think this is the thousand armed Goddess of Mercy


Leaving the compound

After leaving the temple, I backtracked to Longcao Lu metro station and took a train out to the outskirts before transferring to a cab. My destination was some high tech park where many companies like Microsoft and Intel are based in Shanghai. Here I was to meet my friend that is working at Microsoft.

Arriving in a cab


Lunch with a friend of mine at the canteen, pretty nice food here

Having my fill, I said my goodbyes and on his suggestion, decided to head to Xujiahui shopping belt via the metro station with the same name. There are some 4 or 5 major shopping belts all over Shanghai. Unfortunately, for me, I get bored with shopping easily, so I decided to head out to look for old houses at the elusive "French Concession Area". I could never pinpoint exactly where it is from online sources so I just headed off in the direction of one of the roads it is supposed to be on. Turns out that it is actually pretty near my hotel.

Metrocity at Xujiahui


Another huge shopping centre


First glimpse of what is the the French Concession Area


Church. Rather eerie looking with all the trees without leaves and vines.


A school with an English section and French section


Sasha's Restaurant and Bar perhaps



Another street with old looking houses


Now this happily orange looking house has some interesting adornments


Ahah! It is! An Irish pub!


It's the Blarney Stone Irish Pub, but strangely the pubs look really empty in the afternoon. Perhaps it is a lack of tourists


Down a few small roads and turns is another Omalley's Irish Pub, also empty


I noticed a cobbled street. Such streets normally indicate vintage housing. On it, sure enough, was a villa turned German microbrewery, Hofbräu Shanghai, Taojiang Rd.


The villa was built in 1938 before the revolution

That ends the afternoon walk around the French Concession Area. I got back to my hotel amid dark skies and waited for my host to finish work. So that he can take me to savour some local dishes.

I think this is called Crystal Shrimp, the smaller the better. It is completely de-shelled.


Beancurd with egg


Another form of beancurd dish


After dinner, we headed to Xin Tian Di for a drink


A local pub with some band singing, the music was too loud so we shifted outside

The sign reads, "This establishment does not engage chatting services. If anyone speaks to you, it has nothing to do with us. Please place your orders directly with our staff."

Indeed there were some ladies around trying to chat us up. Seems like they might encourage you to make orders for drinks through them and charge an exorbitant rate. So much for the night life here. Due to the loud music we ended up outside. It was pretty cold and raining. Luckily for us, they had outdoor mobile gas heaters. After some chat, I decided to call it a night. Tomorrow will be my last day in Shanghai and I intend to check out the local museum.

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