Testing the senses in Shanghai to find China's best antitourism and off-beat secrets. Dry and sometimes funny observations from a fixed gear roller, food eater and photograph taker.

Xiaohampton

In the minds of we Shanghainizzles, Chongming is the city’s NYC Long Island. We imagine lush greenery, sea breezes and coastal roads. Our mid-term plans include a beach side weekend house in Xiaohamton. We’ll cruise there in the drop-top on weekends and munch on snow crab legs.

It’s absolutely nothing at all like this. Chongming is a big flat slab of Shanghai’s outskirts wedged into the Yangtze river covered in light industry and arable farmland. It’s a nice escape from the city, but don’t get your hopes up.

There are two ways to get to Chongming Island. By boat or bridge. The bride is a new affair and brings the 4hrs journey down to a drive over a pretty impressive 10k elevated road across the water. There are stories that bikes aren’t allowed on the boats (they’re definitely not allowed on the bridge) and being that we wanted to ride the island we hired a driver to take the 6 of us.

Being that this is Shanghai he rocked up in a 30 seater coach. 1000RMB? deal! So yeah. Over to the north east outskirts of town. Through a tunnel, past all the stranded cyclists (haha)(in our minds), over the massive bridge and then 50k west to the other side of the Island where the trees kind-of roam free and Qianweicun village is a beacon for the hordes.

Qianweicun is, according to the sign, a China AAAA rated site. This, according to the sign, means it basically has Unesco status. 60% of it is coach park and 20% identi-kit restaurants so there’s not a lot to see except a distinct lack of skycrapers on the horizon and stars at night. Which is effectively what we came for…

… and the fairground which time forgot, where for 20RMB you can put your Shanghainese girlfriend who has absolutely no road sense in a dodgem and then drive at her whilst she spins uncontrollably backwards in dizzying circles.

Instead of paying one tout an inflated 400RMB for a hotel you can pay another tout an inflated 120RMB for a farmer’s cottage. Farmer’s cottages sound about 555 times more quaint than they are.

How they eat on Chonghampton

They do, however, have clean rooms, a bit of peace and quiet and an able chef who can toss up some of the local specialties which basically comes down to some damn tasty belly pork 紅燒肉 and cold beer.

Kicking back for breakfast

With a good stiff neck and without the sound of traffic, mornings on Chongming Island are only let down by congee. Fresh air requires a fresh fry-up. Not here. After half a dozen boiled eggs it seems only right to head off and find a breeze.

Nice(!) that the Dongping Forest Park doesn’t allow bikes so the only choice is which direction to ride. The island’s roads are long and straight and basically turn into drag strips for Santanas so best to find a balance between quiet back road and turns-into-a-ditch farmer’s path.

Finding every dirt path and dead end on offer

We found every farmer’s path ditch in the west of Chongming trying to reach the shores of the Yangtze. In 3 we hours traced the edge of a 2km square, boxed in by a murky canal and wound up exactly where we’d started with just enough time to raise a beer to the sunset and to the elusive coastal path, forever over that next line of trees.

A sleepy market and the most exciting thing that’s happened all month.

Feeling lonely without a population density of 2500/sqkm? Head to the village market to be stared at by the locals. They didn’t disappoint and came out in-force with their children to see which cucumber we would buy and squeeze the bike tyres.

As we sat in 10k of tailbacks on our oversize coach heading back into Shanghai we pondered over Chongming and its escapist-appeal. The Hamptons are safe for now.

Thanks to Katy and Jon’s suggestion, we took a roll up to the Malu Vineyards – home of Ai Weiwei’s Shanghai Studio. The creator of the Tate’s porcelain sunflower-seed carpet and advisor to the birds nest has seemingly been sailing too close to the wind recently. His newly built space is to be demolished thanks to point 55 of the seventh chapter of the don’t-tick-off the-government rulebook which reads: “don’t tick off the government”.

The route is another antitourism 70km round-trip (we did an extra 10 to find the dead ends) bisecting some of Shanghai’s less attractive suburbs straight up the middle.

Google map here

Heading across Huashan Road, soak in Fahuazhen in the daylight for the first time. Traverse the confluence of the elevated highways and turn north up the mostly monotonous Gubei Road. On the side passes the Water Park and a few massive markets; we’re not far from Tongchuan, seen during our last ride to sweden town.

Keep going until the buildings get bigger/less complete and at the massive gas towers hang a left. Shanghai has a penchant for the Pylon Park and tracking the left side of Jinding Road is a fine example. People get to walk their dogs and gently bask in electronic health-rays.

Depending on when you go, the far reach of this road will be just another smooth road through urban density or it will be like descending into the construction site at the centre of the earth. For now it looks like the building version of The Matrix. High rises aren’t so much being built but mass-incubated. An infinity grid of scaffolding-cocoon encased apartment blocks are emerging from the haze.

Zigzag up and across the A20 and if you like, take it offroad through a tiny slice of countryside. There’s a path across the canal that google doesn’t recognise, you don’t have to return to the Taopu Expy. Head under the bullet train tracks and cut up to the A12.

Then it’s a long, fast, straight line up the Luxiang Highway. They were laying tarmac so by now it should be super smooth most of the way. You’ll pass under two main motorways and see the signs for the Malu Vineyard.

Then the intensity gets dialled down a notch or two. Here’s a community around a bunch of vineyards. It’s no Stellenbosch but has a less-desperate and relaxed vibe, something like the eco village on Chongming. Someone has become a little overexcited, everywhere are laser cut wooden signposts with directions to “Malu orchard corridor” and the “Malu restrooms”.

On the north east corner of the area is the Shanghai Studio; Ai Weiwei’s concrete & brick space for the artistic and architectural. It’s been a couple weeks since the “demolishing party” but there are a few of the dedicated monkeying around and strumming guitars.

We tiptoed around and, as you do, tried all the doors. The square building around a square courtyard has some beautiful spaces within. It’s stark, peaceful and balanced. I’ll leave the archispeak to the experts, in essence – it’s not utterly amazing but takes on an empty, macabre feeling – especially with the demolishing crane stood at-ease in the car-park.

a few more photos here

We got talking to a couple of the guys who had come from far-flung China to soak in the essence. One was incredibly proud of the bald patch across his scalp shaved by Ai himeself. He offered that we could go and visit Weiwei in Beijing, “If only to ask him for a sunflower seed” I offered. From a pocket his friend produced a little packet with a couple inside; “no need – take these”.

Save for the grubby looks I get when I admit it – Guangzhou is one of my favorite cities in China. The food is good, the weather always fine (except when it’s chucking it down) and the culture emerging. Maybe it’s just the super-smooth roads but explore a random hutong in Haizhu, particulary the area north and south of Jiangnan West Road and perhaps you’ll get a feel for what I mean.

Getting there from Hong Kong. Don’t book in advance, then miss your train and have to buy a new one. Just buy it when you get there – the train is massive.
Getting there from Shanghai. Wait until Q1 2011 when the world’s fastest train (or high-speed depending who’s commenting on this) will arrive 15 minutes before you left.

Not happy with yesterdays 80km jaunt, today we headed west instead of east. We took a 110k loop which circled around Sheshan, stopped off in Zhujiajiaozhen, made it to the lake, made our jaws drop on the floor and then slogged 40k home in a blustery head wind. Not for the faint hearted. Map here.

We’ve been to Sheshan before so didn’t pay the red note or two to climb up to the observatory and basilica. Instead kept on trucking, stopping every so often to down 4 pints of water trying to compensate for the 38c heat bearing down on our backs. Thank god for finding the rapha sleeves – a true godsend.

From Sheshan we headed north-west towards the lakes with a stop off for lunch. The small watertown of Zhujiajiaozhen seemingly has two specialities; (1) heavy glutinous rice balls stuffed with sesame or red bean or pork (2) something fantastic; lumps of pork wrapped in banana leaves and boiled until they’re like mouthfuls of soft pork butter. Absolutely delicious.

We’ve heard of this impossible aircraft carrier on a tiny patch of water next to Dianshan Lake, and honestly, after checking google maps last night – it was the main reason we came out. Call me doubting Thomas but until I saw it with my own eyes I couldn’t beleive it was true.

They’ve only gone and built a full scale replica of the Soviet Varyag… out of concrete. The original was supposedly bought in order to make a new Macau casino but it has since been undergoing an engine and capabilities refit. One can only guess as to why they’d build something like this but here it is in the middle of Oriental Land, a family park where for 50RMB you can walk around the gardens, ride the go-karts and puke on the pirate ship… all hardy Chinese past-times… or for 120RMB you can climb aboard an entirely fake aircraft carrier complete with real fighter jets and choppers.

Amazing.