on the fastest train in the world and more - Shanghai adventures

My Shanghai adventures were:
- driving with the Maglev, the first magnetic levitation train (German: Magnetschwebebahn) in the world from the city of Shanghai to Pudong airpirt. Wow, not bad, we reached 430 km/h. In the curves this felt quite strange, but an interesting experience.

- visiting Yuyuan garden, a small garden hidden between busy tourist streets on the one side of the garden and old typical small alleys with foodstalls on the street on the other side of the garden.

- cruising on the Huangpu river from where you can see the Bund ('waitan') which basically consists of old colonial style buildings mostly in British style. The British founded the city of Shanghai as a trade port (of mainly opium, silk and tea) in 1842 - beforehand just some local fishermen had lived there. On the other bank of the river you can see the district of Pudong -the business and financial district of Shanghai. However, its skyline and skyscrapers cannot be compared to the impressive skyline of Hongkong which beats Shanghai by far when it comes to that.

My impression of Shanghai in a nutshell: a relatively modern business town worth visiting, but don't expect the big surprise. Still I cannot agree the statement of many people that Shanghai is not a Chinese city at all from the look & feel. Despite the fact that every tenth person you meet on the street / in the subway is a stranger, it still feels like China, because of the people, the buildings etc.