Shanghai nights

It has been so hectic last few days. We arrived by an internal plane into Shanghai and ended up stopping at a hotel near to the airport, wasnt expensive and it was 2am so we were pretty tired. We experienced our first serious rainfall upon arrival in the city itself. In about 5 minutes the rain was soo hard the roads just became rivers. We sheltered under a bus stop but were soaking, luckily it was still around 30 degrees so it wasnt as if we were freezing!
Shanghai was even more modern than Xian. You can definitely tell the western influence there. Shanghai is a busy shipping post and if you head straight across the sea to the east you will hit America, which may explain all the Starbucks, KFCs and McDonalds. There are also plenty of westerners milling around so finally we are not looked upon as some kind of sideshow.
The main attraction of Shanghai is the amazing skyline of the city buildings at a place called the Bund. This is a long promenade where everybody mills around having there photo taken with a backdrop of multi-coloured lit up buildings, at night, and the river which runs through it. There are also plenty of hawkers trying to sell you all manner of crap, handful of illuminous squidgy blob anyone? The views are spectacular, including the more western style buildings connected with the US as well as some english style architecture too.
Other than the main view of the city there isn't a great lot else to Shanghai. Its mainly a shopping city, huge shopping centers everywhere with floors and floors of endless top name brand names. Dull.
We did visit the old town, not that it seemed to old, and it was an odd mix of mainly renovated or new chinese buildings with loads of Starbucks, KFCs and jewellery shops. I cant even think how many times I got asked if I wanted to buy a bag, shoes, watch or hat. I got sick of just saying no or shaking my head to responding with - Id rather stick pins in my eyes than buy that crap.
There is another con trick here, more subtle than other places though. A young chinese couple approach you and get talking to you saying they are studying english, asking where you are from and the such, and say they are going to a tea festival and would we like to come and learn about chinese culture while they can practice their english. They lead you off, all friendly of course, straight to a tiny room where you are presented with a price list to buy tea. They must get commission or get a salary during their school holidays. Thing is I had already said I hated tea but they just want the money. Like I was even going to consider buying any tea! We left fairly quickly. A few times this scenario cropped up after the first time so we learned to just walk on if anyone asked us where we were from.
We did visit a great museum by accident though. An urban planning museum which had this huge model of Shanghai. It was really high tech too, which was quite surprising after what we had seen already in China. Although there wasn't much history here it did feel like Shanghai was or could be more of a capital than Beijing.
The time in Shanghai was good and I would probably go back at some point but not in a great rush. If I had a load of money with me then it would have been better but we mainly used the time there just to relax and laze about.
One thing is that so far in China the food on the whole has been really good and Shanghai was no exception. Quality grub for little money, although it seems that we are gradually going up the scale in expense as we near Hong Kong.
A 20 hour train to Hong Kong awaited us. I was not looking forward to it at all.
But Ill have to save it for another post because my free internet time is about to expire!

Below, the biggest model of a city I've ever seen. Ok, I've not seen that many but still.