Shanghai – fastest, longest and oldest

China has a population of 1.3 billion and rising. 

Shanghai is China’s largest city easily comparable to Tokyo and Mexico City. Shanghai is also the worlds’ busiest shipping port with at least a third of all exports passing through its docks. It has a colourful history that attracted every kind of fortune-hunter, gangster and smuggler. It was at one time known to be the wildest city on earth where every form of vice flourished. The city’s name is in English dictionaries as a verb meaning “to kidnap”.

When the communists took over in 1949, Shanghai was cleaned up and is now the most important economic corridor to the western nations for China.

There is so much to see that I had to prioritise so I chose the fastest, longest and oldest and added them to my bucket list.

Fastest – Maglev Train

I found something that goes faster than the Lamborghini I drove in Singapore, the Maglev train. It looks like a modern train (any train looks modern/futuristic compared to Australia) with no hint of what speed it can do. We arrived at the station for the short run and sat in conventional seats. The doors quietly closed and the train noiselessly slipped away from the station. Within minutes we were travelling at 400kph with no sense of it. The bullet trains of Japan are noisier and slower. This is an ABSOLUTE MUST DO on anyone’s bucket list.
The $US1.2 billion Shanghai Transrapid is a magnetic levitation train, or maglev line that is the first commercially operated high-speed magnetic levitation line in the world. Service commenced in 2004. The top operational speed of this train is 431 km, making it the world's fastest train in regular service, faster than TGV in France and faster than the top speed of any Formula One car, MotoGp and Lamborghini.
The train line connects Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the outskirts of central Pudong where passengers interchange to the Shanghai Metro to continue their trip to the city centre. China now has bullet trains as well that are much cheaper to build and maintain so there is no immediate plan to expand the maglev network. Work has commenced to connect Hong Kong and Beijing by bullet train.

Longest – Grand Canal

The Grand Canal of China is the world's oldest and longest canal, far surpassing the next two grand canals of the world: Suez and Panama Canal.
The building of the canal began in 486 B.C. during the Wu Dynasty to answer the concern that there was no easy transportation between north and south China. This restricted economic, cultural and political integration so Wu picked up a shovel and the rest is history. The canal is 1,795 Km (1,114 miles) long with 24 locks and some 60 bridges.

The Grand Canal connects a large number of rivers – the five natural water systems of Yangtze, Huaihe River, Yellow River, Haihe River, and Qiantang River, combining to form a grand network of water routes. In 2006, the Grand Canal was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Well, as grand as the Grand Canal might be, our tour on it was more akin to a Jetstar flight. I am sure that an entrepreneurial Chinese person bought an old coal barge and 40 old restaurant chairs, combined the two and began Grand Canal tours.  We wheezed and spluttered our way up the canal in anything but a straight line. There were no refreshments available in the un-airconditioned barge for the 35 degree 1.5 hour tour in the humid airless environs of the Canal. I am sure the tour operator had a sense of humour as the horn to alert other vessels of our approach to bridges was INSIDE the cabin. This at least restarted the hearts of several of the overheated passengers as we traversed some 10+ bridges.



I am sure we will laugh about it one day....

 Oldest – Humble Administrators Garden

The waterside City of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province is known as the “Venice” of China as it sits on a tapestry of some several hundred connected canals that feed into the Grand Canal. It is also most famous for it’s “Humble Administrator's Garden”, covering about 52,000 sq. meters, and is the largest and most renowned garden in China. It is listed as a World Cultural Heritage site and has also been designated as one of the Cultural Relics of National Importance under the Protection of the State as well as a Special Tourist Attraction of China.  

The pink lotus is the supreme lotus, it is often associated with the highest deity, the Buddha himself. Though often confused with the white lotus, it is the pink lotus that symbolizes Buddha where the white lotus is used for lesser holy figures.

The Humble Administrator's Garden was built in 1509 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It was initially a private garden of a former government servant who probably took an early voluntary redundancy. It was said he intended to build a garden after retirement and just do some gardening work like planting trees and vegetables, hence the name of the garden. The garden is home to pure strain Ming Dynasty varieties of the Lotus Flower. These are shipped all over the world. The garden includes original pavilions, halls and parlours of the Ming Dynasty building style.

This too was a little less desirable than the above paragraphs might have you visualise. Whilst the proliferation of Lotus varieties in multiple garden settings of original Ming fixtures was certainly breathtaking, there were 20,000+ other people in the gardens who also thought so. Our leisurely stroll through the gardens was more like a sweaty conga line at a boozy wedding, camera’s sweat, inappropriate touching by alleged relatives………. Ewww! 

A fast train, a long canal and a few old flowers managed to keep a smile on our face ans sweat on our brows for the day, now on to Tianjin and an old long wall that everyone is raving about.