Brooms at the ready!

April 4th is a National Holiday here in China, marking tomb sweeping festival.  This combined with redecoration at our school, re-scheduled classes and the fact I’m not aware of any tombs in the area that require sweeping, leads to 4 consecutive days off and two ‘days’ of very light admin duties!  With two of my old university friends in town, this couldn’t have come at a better time.  Add to this the fact that Mother Nature appears to have forgotten about spring and leapt head first in to summer things could not get any better.

Day 1 saw us visiting The Jade Buddha Temple, this is the largest and most impressive temple in central Shanghai.  Having seen a fair few of these whilst in South East Asia, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, but it turned out to be rather nice.  The two largest jade Buddha carvings, each made from a single piece of jade are very impressive, it’s just a shame you can’t get up close to them.  From here, we ventured down to Nanjing Road, the main pedestrian shopping area of town, before strolling down The Bund.  A few metro stops away lies The Yuyuan Gardens, our last stop for the day.

Jade Buddha Temple

 

Yuyuan gardens tea room

The following day saw us venturing out of the city centre on a daytrip to Jiading Ancient Town, which lies at the end of metro line 11.  Aided with a map and common sense we navigated our way to the bus station and clambered on to the right bus.  It’s a nice little place, with lots of old buildings, pagodas, bridges and canals.  Similar to the town of Xitang I visited last month, it made a refreshing change from the skyscrapers of the city.

Jiading Ancient Town

All in all an incredibly enjoyable few days, which makes me even more appreciative of my two consecutive days off each week, as I now know just how much I can do with this time and how many places lie a short journey from central Shanghai.  Off to the fabric market now to pick up some bargains and exercise my bartering gene!

A xx