16 Dec 2017 - Shanghai Day 2: Yu Garden Old Street (豫园老街)

After exiting Yuyuan (豫园) metro station, we walked towards the old street and saw a group of adorable dogs each carrying a doll on its back.  Interesting.

Before going to Yuyuan, we decided to find a place for a quick lunch.  Since all of us fell in love with the Xiao Long Bao in Shanghai, we entered the below food outlet which was an obvious choice.

Beside Xiao Long Bao, we love their noodles and sliced beef too.

The area around Yuyuan are buildings with the olden architecture.

After crossing a few streets, we arrived at Yuyuan Old Street (豫园老街).

It was packed with people probably due to weekend crowd.  We had a hard time navigating ourselves through the people to reach Yuyuan Garden.

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16 Dec 2017 - Shanghai Day 2: People's Park (人民公园)

Two metro stations away from Jing'an Temple is People's Square (人民广场) station where we alighted.

The People's Park is also known as the Renmin Park, with a total area of 98,200 square meters (24.3 acres).

The moment we entered the park, we saw lots of people gathered along the path and the interesting thing was that there were umbrellas with messages all over the place.  At closer look, the information that was written on these notes was personal information of those who want to find a partner, including their gender, age, occupations, income, photos, telephone number, and educational background.  In addition, their requirements for partners can also be found on the notes.

This area of the park is known as The Marriage Market, which is one of the highlights of Shanghai People's Park.  During weekends, lots of parents will come here to either choose the future wives and husbands for their children, or to "promote" their own children to other parents.  

After going through the crowd, we came to the west area of the park which is made up of two pools. Lotus flowers are planted in the east pool while gold fish are raised in the west pool. To the east of the pond are the exuberant dawn redwoods and to the west stands a square pavilion.

The Antarctic Stone is in the middle area of the park. It was collected by the first Chinese Antarctic expedition on the George Island at the South Pole on February 21st, 1982. It was erected in the park on February 2nd, 1985. With a height of 1.7 meters (1.9 yards), the elliptical dark brown stone bears inscriptions of "Antarctic Stone" (南极石).

Further down the park, there is an amusement park.  Our original plan was to visit the Shanghai Museum which is supposed to be nearby but in view of time, we decided to skip it and took the metro to Yuyuan (豫园).

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16 Dec 2017 - Shanghai Day 2: Jing'an Temple (静安寺)

The first place where we visited today is Jing'an Temple (静安寺), which is just a few Metro stops away from Hong Qiao. Jing'an Temple is one of the most famous temples in Shanghai located at West Nanjing Road. In 1983, it was put on the list of nationally protected sites.

Jing'an Temple ("Temple of Peace and Tranquility") is an ancient Buddhist temple with a history of more than 700 years. The temple was first built in 247 AD in the Wu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China and was named Hudu Chongyuan Temple.. When it was originally built, it was located beside the Suzhou Creek. In 1216 during the Song Dynasty, it was relocated to its present address. The present temple was rebuilt in the Qing Dynasty.  The first tramcar was built taking Jing'an Temple as its starting station. Later, a famous calligrapher renamed it as Jing'an Temple in 1945 and is still named as such today. The temple site became a plastics factory during the cultural revolution, and the buildings were burned down in 1972. However, the reconstruction began after 1984, so the Hall of Heavenly Kings and the Three-Sage Hall were repaired in succession. In 1990, the whole temple was finally opened to the public.

There is a large tripod shrine in a court area where people burn sticks or paper and try to throw coins for good luck.  After Jerlene and Javier saw what the other people did, they too started throwing coins into the shrine.

There are three main halls here: The Mahavira Hall, the Hall of Heavenly Kings and the ThreeSage Hall.

In Mahavira Hall, the biggest pure jade portrait of Sakyamuni in Mainland China is placed. The jade Buddha has a height of 3.78 meters (about 12 feet), a weight of 2.6 meters (about 9 feet) and a weight of 11,000 kilograms.

It was amazing to visit such a place in the middle of a busy city district.

Other than the Jade Buddha, there are other Buddhist or Taoist idols situated in different halls within Jing'an Temple.

A huge drum known as the Peace Drum (太平鼓) was seen in one of the smaller hall.

We spent more than an hour visiting the various parts of the temple.  Before we left, Jerlene and Javier decided to make a few more good luck wishes by throwing more coins into the tripod shrine.  :-)

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16 Dec 2017 - Shanghai Day 2: Daily breakfast at the Hotel Grand Mercure

We all woke up pretty late today as we only had a few hours of sleep from yesterday's early morning flight here.  The rain finally stopped after raining for the whole of yesterday.  We had a good view of the surrounding area from our hotel suite.

We quickly washed up and still in time for buffet breakfast at the hotel.  Breakfast is included when we booked the hotel suite.

After breakfast, we walked to the Metro station to start our day of exploration in Shanghai.  Below are just some random shots along the way.

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15 Dec 2017 - Shanghai Day 1: Two Bedroom Suite at Hotel Grand Mercure (上海虹橋美爵酒店)

We are going to stay for 5 nights in a two bedroom suite in Hotel Grand Mercure at Hong Qiao.  It is a very nice and clean suite with a comfortable size.  Once we entered from the main door, we were "presented" with a dining area followed by a living room that comes with a huge LED TV.

The suite also comes with an open concept kitchen, fully equipped with a refrigerator, microwave oven, washing machine etc.

Both bedrooms come with its own attached toilet which was great.

Above is a bedroom with two twin beds and below is the master bedroom with a king size bed.

We were all super satisfied with this suite and glad that we will be staying here for 5 nights.  The only demerit point of this hotel is the location.  The nearest Metro station is about 15-20mins walk away.  When I asked Jerlene and Javier whether they prefer a good hotel that is far from metro station or a "not so good" hotel but just next to the metro station, both their answers are a straight "GOOD HOTEL"!  :-)

Since we had such a comfortable dining area, we decided to call for room service for our dinner.

So satisfied!  :-)

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