Value for Money

D goes back to England for the summer holidays on Friday. Schools here finish for the summer at the end of June; there is something of an exodus as many expats return to their home countries for the two months of the summer holidays. In fact, D said a final goodbye to three of his friends as they were leaving Shanghai for good….such is life here. In an attempt to fill this week with as many activities as possible before he leaves, I got out my ‘Riding the Dragon’ book. This particular book is a guide to living in Shanghai and has proved to be worth its weight in gold. While there are plenty of books for tourists around, and some of these even have a page on Children in Shanghai, none of them really go into sufficient depth to cover two months worth of entertainment over the summer holidays. The Riding the Dragon book has an entire chapter devoted to it.

There is a population in Shanghai of approximately 15 million. I assume this figure includes children, and due to the one-child-per-family policy, I also assume there are very approximately 5 million children in Shanghai. I would also assume that very approximately 4.9 million of them live in high-rise apartment blocks, and so something must be done to provide entertainment. And something certainly is done.

We visited the Shanghai Science and Technological Museum some time ago; from the outside, an extremely impressive futuristic building, all steel and glass and enormous dragon sculptures - finished only 3 years ago and apparently the largest of its kind in Asia. I had certainly never seen anything coming even close to it in England. Inside were recreations of earthquakes and volcanoes, a tropical rainforest, an enormous hall of hands-on experiments, and even a recreation of a journey to the centre of the earth….and all for 60RMB each (about £4).

Yesterday we went to Dino Beach. This is an outdoor water park, only 10 minutes away from where we live and practically next door to the indoor ski slope. The entrance to Dino Beach is marked by a large plastic tyrannosaurus rex. This was obviously continuing the dinosaur theme suggested by the name, but the dinosaur theme both started and ended there. After queuing at various windows to obtain (separately) entrance tickets, locker keys, waterproof holder to contain said locker key, and large rubber ring, we finally made it to the changing rooms. This process was not made any easier by there being no English instructions anywhere, just hundreds of lines of Chinese characters. In England, the communal changing rooms in swimming pools are fairly commonplace. I assume there were plenty of women who were perfectly comfortable with this concept; I was not one of them. However, in a water park in Shanghai that was presumably never intended for tourists, the idea of a communal changing room takes on a whole new meaning. As I have explained on several occasions, the Chinese are completely happy to stand and stare at whatever takes their interest. And two westerners, struggling to change into swimming costumes under bright orange beach towels, were certainly extremely interesting. Still, it was worth it to ride the Typhoon River Rapids, a 30 minute ride spent sitting on the rubber ring and being propelled through caves dripping ice cold water, jungle terrain with mists and tropical plants and waterfalls, even at one point floating through the restaurant, and finishing by being buffeted by huge waves and flung against the walls. It was worth it to visit the ‘beach’, complete with sand and umbrellas and a ‘sea’ with waves. It was worth it for the slides, and it was worth it for the ‘amusement park’ – an enormous play area in an enormous pool. The water park opens at 9am and closes at 9pm. And all this for 60RMB…about £4.

And today we went to the Pearl Tower. This is the tower that appears on every photo of Shanghai, built around 10 years ago and 468 metres high. We went to the middle, we went to the top, we had lunch in the revolving restaurant, we went in the lift that apparently travels at 7 metres per second, and we descended the final 90 metres in the glass elevator. We finished our day in the Shanghai History museum, housed at the base of the tower and consisting of endless reconstructions and tableaux of shops and streets, houses and rooms, absolutely fascinating and so well done. And all this for 100RMB….about £6.50.

We have another 22 places ticked in my Riding the Dragon book, ready to visit over the next 7 weeks. Obviously not all of them will be as impressive as these three days out, but it is certainly apparent that when it comes to providing leisure facilities, no expense is spared here. I thought about Alton Towers, certainly the most impressive theme park England has to offer, and the entrance fee – about £85 for a family ticket, I seem to recall. If a cleaner earns £6 an hour in England, she would have to work for 14 hours to earn enough money to take her family to Alton Towers for the day. Here, our cleaner (who is comparatively well-paid) would have to work for 40 hours to earn enough to buy 4 tickets for Dino Beach. Although of course, she would only need 3 tickets as she’s only allowed to have one child.

Unusual weather for the time of year

It only seems like a couple of weeks ago that we were amazed when the thermometer in the car registered an outside temperature of 35 degrees. The first time I saw it go to 41°C, I sent S a text. 41°C! A couple of days later, it displayed 46°. Another excited text. But every day, the temperature crept up another degree, We got so used to this that we were disappointed on the odd occasion it dipped below 40°C. And then on Friday, it displayed an incredible 51°C. I took a picture of the display. But we were beginning to doubt the accuracy of either the display or the thermometer.

There is no doubt that the weather here is not doing what it should be doing. June is supposed to be the rainy season, two to three weeks at least of solid rain. Apart from looking a bit overcast one Thursday afternoon, there was no sign of any rain all month. This apparently has never been known before. July and August are supposed to be the hottest months, with around 20 days of temperatures exceeding 35 degrees. So far already this year there have been 9 days of temperatures exceeding 35 degrees, and we’re only 3 days into July. With temperatures like this, going out for any length of time is not an option – it’s simply a case of making your way from one air-conditioned location to another as quickly as possible. And so on Saturday we decided to visit the Shanghai Aquarium. This was built only a few years ago, and is billed as state of the art - and it certainly didn’t disappoint. With indoor recreations of areas as diverse as the Amazon Jungle and the Antarctic, it was a pleasant and impressive way to avoid the heat. With temperatures of 30°C, it was cooler in the Amazon Jungle than it was outside. After two hours, the final stage of our tour was to board the ‘travellator’ (a moving pathway) that transported us through glass tunnels where sharks swam all around us. In true Western style, the end of the journey arrived when the travellator deposited us neatly in the Gift Shop. Bizarrely, the Gift Shop must have been the only public building in Shanghai that was not air-conditioned, so there was no hanging around in there. But as we fled past the displays of pink fluffy dolphins and turtle fridge magnets, S spotted a thermometer…we had to have it.

When we got home, we took our new thermometer up to the roof garden. “I think we’re supposed to measure the temperature in the shade”, said S, putting the thermometer in the shadow of one of the walls. We went back to look at it 10 minutes later. The temperature was 47°C.