I’m not sure this year’s Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year) quite lived up to it’s name, falling in late January, but the four-day weekend gave us a great chance to finally go and see China—a piece of it, at least.

Conspiracy of Mother Nature to foil our plans

In fact, we almost didn’t make it. After resigning ourselves to an almost snow-less winter, we left our building Saturday morning (January 24th) with our single piece of luggage only to discover a 6-inch blanket of the white stuff. This would be no big deal back in Michigan; they’ve got the infrastructure to deal with it and would have had salt and plows on the roads by 5 am. But in Korea, this was an exceptional case and thus even the highways were in terrible shape. It didn’t help that the airport bus was Standing Room Only when our driver had to swerve at 50 mph to avoid hitting a spun-out Kia.

We knew it was a big travel holiday here, but we were not prepared for the crowds as we arrived at Incheon International Airport just 45 minutes before takeoff. It felt like the airport scene in Home Alone; after jumping queue to business class check-in, idling through security and immigration, running to the tram (“We have to go to another terminal!?”), running off the tram, up the escalators and to the gate, we were just in time for the final boarding call.

Our tiny, hidden hotel and the eerie dearth of people around town

My lovely wife found a great little hotel near the French Concession called the Old House Inn. It was a bit difficult to find under the cover of darkness, but the antique furniture, four-poster bed, and great service were worth the 30-minute walk freezing our butts off. Evidently, this was an uncharacteristically cold spell for Shanghai, and we felt that all weekend. Good thing the cabs were cheap and plentiful, or we may have lost some toes.

It seemed like we were the only guests there, and we assumed most people were getting away from the city for the holiday. Almost everywhere we went on Saturday and Sunday was noticeably uncrowded, even deserted. It was hard to believe that a city with 18 million people could be so calm.

We went out to Suzhou Sunday morning, planning to take a train, but it turned out they weren’t selling tickets that day. Strange. There were huge queuing areas and waiting rooms, but I thought it should have been much more crowded. We ended up taking a bus, and managed to avoid being swindled by a few guys selling triple-price tickets outside.

New Year’s Eve

After spending the day exploring Suzhou’s gardens and canals, we came back to Shanghai and had a delicious—really, really delicious—dinner at a local Manchurian restaurant. The place was all decked out in red balloons to celebrate the New Year, and we watched families trickle in and have their holiday feasts. By this point, we were starting to see people coming out of their hiding places, and the firecrackers were going full-bore on the sidewalks.

We welcomed the Year of the Ox down on The Bund at midnight, watching a fireworks display that put the Fourth of July to shame. Huge bursts of light filled the whole city; people certainly weren’t going to let buildings get in the way of their fun. At midnight, the explosions boomed continuously at fever pitch for fifteen minutes in every direction. It was a sight to behold.

The next morning, you could still smell the gunpowder in the air—it permeated through the whole city.

The people emerge, en masse

Monday morning walking to the metro station near our hotel, we saw a huge crowd of people flowing into the Jin’an Temple so we went in to check it out. It was absolutely packed in there with hundreds of people lighting incense and throwing coins into the giant metal pagoda/urn/offering vessel for good luck.

We were very obviously the only white people there, which left us feeling even more foreign than back in Korea. Actually, aside from some of the fireworks spectators, we barely ran into any other foreigners at all. But from Monday on, we saw no shortage of locals anywhere we went, including the old town and Yu Gardens area which felt more like a noisy can of sardines than a marketplace.

A tale of two cities

The rapid economic development of Shanghai was obvious, with dozens of massive skyscrapers that each would be the icon of any other city. But there are still neighborhoods that seem untouched since the 19th century—right across the street from all the glass and steel. These areas look to be quickly disappearing, redeveloped and reimagined as over gentrified walk-and-shop districts, complete with boutique stores and upscale restaurants, but scrubbed clean of much of their charm.

After a walk through the French Concession on Tuesday morning, we hopped on the speedy maglev (431 km/h = 268 mph) for the quickest trip to the airport we’ve ever taken. We had a great time dipping our toes into China, and we look forward to seeing a lot more of the country in the months to come.