life in Shanghai China

You don't need to fly to Beijing to enjoy this tasty, classic Chinese dish, there are some excellent offerings in the heart of Shanghai. We review and recommend three restaurants ranging from the pricey to the value.

We discuss an excellent way to make sure you have those much desired restaurant reservations in Shanghai using Dining Secretary. We also compare to fine Chinese restaurants in the Pudong financial district. And finally, we beat the cold and snow with a visit to the warm Shanghai Pudong Apple store to check for sales.

Before ending with some facts and observations on Shanghai's air quality, we board an Expo ferry for the first time since the end of Expo in October to see how they are doing in their new role. We visit Shanghai's new Hotel Indigo on the Bund, do some people watching on a chilly day.

We look at preparations for the upcoming Chinese New Year festival and share our impressions of travel in Vietnam including visits to Hanoi, Hoi An, Saigon and Phu Quoc.

We visit and walk all 4 floors of Shanghai's Traditional Time-Honored Brand Mall in the Pudong district. The mall is easy to find with our directions and as we discover, offers some fine values on well made traditional Chinese arts, crafts, clothing and foods.

Traditional Chinese brands can be hard to find and tough to purchase. That task is now easier with the opening of the Zhonghau Laozihao Shangcheng or TIme-Honored Chinese Brand Shopping Mall in the Pudong area of Shanghai. There are over a hundred products including jewelry, clothes, cosmetics and perhaps most interestingly craft items. Purchase traditional hand made wood fans and umbrellas at very reasonable prices.

We visit Shanghai Films Park and its magnificent recreation of 1930s downtown Shanghai and Nanjing [Nanking] Road. Strolling the large sets and mixing with the costumed actors is a trip back in time. We sample the much acclaimed Yang's fried dumplings on the real West Nanjing Road.

Late this Halloween night we visit Shanghai Expo 2010 for the last time. In just a few more hours it will shut the gates for the final time. How busy is the final evening and what events are happening? We take a look.

Yesterday morning the 70 millionth visitor passed through the Shanghai Expo 2010 entrance. We look at the numbers and examine what to expect during this coming final week. Also, as Expo ends what questions does it raise? We pose a few.

Our first Expo ferry voyage taken almost exactly 6 months ago - it seems fitting we take a final cruise down the Huangpu in the closing days of Expo 2010. Though attendance has zoomed with over 730,000 visitors yesterday and a total attendance of over 68 million to date, today seems to be starting off a bit calmer. We sail to Expo, then wander the Puxi side of Expo and finish with a fine lunch.

On Saturday, October 16 the Shanghai Expo broke several attendance records, including setting the all time high for total visitors at 64.6 million visitors to date as well as the record for visitors in one day with 1.03 million attendees. We make our plans to join the mad rush to visit Expo during the upcoming final two weeks.

We visit and stroll around the city center of Tianjin, China about 100 miles east of Beijing. And, we review a recently released survey of Chinese regarding Expo.

Continuing our slow day at Expo we explore the national pavilions of Azerbaijan, Hungry, Turkey, Libya, Peru, and Colombia.

We visit eight country pavilions including Cambodia, Philippines, Australia, Czech Republic, Belarus, Armenia, Maldova, and Albania.

Attendance at Expo slows over the national holiday week in early October. We take advantage of the quiet days and explore over dozen pavilions beginning with Oman and Pakistan.