This morning we cruised up the Yangtze River for 2 hours to reach the Boashan Cruise Terminal.

Shanghai has the third largest port in the world. As we enter the river, the water quickly changes from a beautiful sea blue to muddy brown.

The Yangtze is 6418 km (3988 miles) long. Who remembers that from primary school social studies????

After about one hour we start passing huge cranes that load the container ships. These large vessels are not allowed up the river so a series of small barges bring the cargo from further up the river down to be loaded. It’s like a huge river highway. Hundreds of barges carrying anything from metal containers to coal, soil, and building supplies go past us on the way down stream. Shortly later the river traffic gets busy going back upstream as the first barges unload and go back for more. Like in Thailand, these barges are manned by a worker and his family who live on board. The lanes of river traffic are very distinct and there are also Police boats seen regularly along the way, moving between the barges.

After 2 hours of river cruising the Diamond Princess does a complete 360 degree turn on the left side of the river to moor at Boashan Cruise Terminal. This ship can manoeuvre itself easily, but today there are 2 tug boats assigned to push us to shore. We cannot see why this is necessary and so are wondering if it is China’s way of ensuring everyone is employed. Once tied up the 2 tug boats are replaced by 2 fuel vessels that tie up alongside to refuel the Diamond while we are ashore.

This is a very late arrival at port as it is now 11 and we usually arrive at new ports early in the morning.

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Today we have booked a Princess tour to take us to the Jin Mao Tower, The Yu Gardens, and Old Town.

Due to Chinese immigration processes it takes a long time to get off the ship. Our passports are stamped with Chinese visas which we obtained in January. Our passports were returned to us last night so we can show immigration and be matched to our photos.
Once through all the checks, we board our coach for the 1 hour trip to the middle of Shanghai. What a magnificent city. We have a guide (Alex) who speaks good English so we learn a lot about the history and culture on the way.
The one child policy has several versions. For city people, one child only (negative population growth). For farmers, if the first child is a daughter they can try once more for a son to do the farm work. If second child is a daughter, they can have no more children. For young people starting families now, if they are both ‘only child’ they can have 2 children (zero population growth). It was only one generation ago that large families were encouraged and couples who had 10 children were rewarded. How quickly the understandings, needs and culture of a country can change.

The other aspect we found interesting was that only 15% of Shanghai people own cars. Ownership is discouraged as cars cost about 15000 RMB but registration costs 93,500 RMB. This is a one-off, lifetime payment , but is large enough to discourage ownership. They compensate by making sure the public transport system is well planned and efficient. We could learn so much to improve Sydney.

When the temperature reaches 37 degrees, school is cancelled. Alex (our guide) told a few stories about his childhood and the length of time the temperature remained high enough to get out of school.

When we reach the centre of Shanghai we are amazed by the beauty of the architecture. The city government invited world famous architects to design buildings to show off their skills, so all the major ‘high rise’ are different and very individual. The high rise sit where there was farmland 30 years ago – all high rise have been built since 1990. Prior to 1990 there was no foreign trade. Since opening to the rest of the world there has been rapid development. The population is currently 24 million. All of Australia in one city!!!

They did a huge clean up for the 2010 World expo and the city is exceptionally clean.

They have a Festival of Planting Trees every year to continue to green the environment. Everyone plants a tree and it is named after them.

Our first stop is Jin Mao tower – 88 storeys (88 means double fortune). The lift is so smooth you don’t know you are moving. The view is fantastic.

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Next stop is the Yu Gardens – lots of history.

Then we have time in ‘Old Town’. This a market area so we did a bit of shopping/looking. We had some lunch in a restaurant suggested by our guide but it seems to be a limited menu as it is Sunday.

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Rather than completing the tour and returning to the ship we caught a taxi to The Bund (The riverside – a bit like Darling Harbour.) The wall gardens were amazing and we could see all the new buildings. We walked part way down Nanjing Street that is meant to have 1 million customers per day but we found nothing to interest us and it definitely was not crowded.

We met our friends, (Peter, Michelle, Peter and Pam) at 5.30 near the ferry terminal and took the 6pm river cruise to see the sunset and watch the city light up. It was an hour well spent. Paul’s movies will show this better than my photos.

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Paul’s movie of our river cruise:

Then we caught another taxi back to the shuttle stop. This time we had an inexperienced driver and I was actually looking for a seat belt – what a scary ride!!!!

Then back to the Diamond for dinner and a good rest.