guide to Shanghai 上海 part 1

spending close to 3 months in Shanghai, i thought i'd share some insights about the things i've learned while i was there. i actually did two posts on my tumblr on sites to use while in China, what with the great firewall and all so do check that out if you're so inclined to. reason why i did it on tumblr was because it wasn't affected by the firewall and while i could still access blogger, i had to share the proxy server with 2 other people in the house which made for a lot of disconnections and lost posts. now that my friends, is a real test of a woman's patience. bad internet connection and i was ready to drown my sorrows in alcohol!

navigation 1.0
navigation 1.1

let me first begin with your arrival at the airport. the one thing every traveler needs when navigating in a foreign land is a GPS and enough money to burn on really expensive data roaming plans. but then we're not all born rich or have a money tree growing in our backyard so we'll go old school and get ourselves a map! if you know how to read a map, that is. i'm saying this because i recently watched a movie and this teenage girl commented that our generation can't read maps. it's sad but true. kids these days wtf. 

thankfully in Shanghai airport, they have them at the ready for you. if i'm not mistaken, you'll see these maps when you're queueing at immigration. grab them because these maps will save you! they've got the entire metro lines mapped out for you which makes planning your journey a breeze! almost all the major areas are connected by the metro lines so this is a great way to save on cab fare! taking a cab in Shanghai is not as cheap compared to Beijing but the service and attitude of the Shanghai taxi drivers are gold! 

before i proceed further, i would definitely suggest if you have an ipod touch or an iphone to download 2 really great apps.

1. SmartShanghai

i found out about this while i was surfing around for things to do in Shanghai. i was led to their website www.smartshanghai.com which is a similar concept to TimeOut.

2. Shanghai Taxi 

this is also a great app for navigating the treacherous Shanghainese roads language barrier that is the chinese language, mandarin. i think most if not all the taxi drivers don't speak a word of english so if you can't speak the language, it will be very difficult for you to get around plus it won't help you one bit if you have the name of the place in english because they don't know it. you always, always have to have the name of where you're going in chinese and in chinese characters too! whenever i had to take the taxi to go to a mall or wherever else, i always did my research online to find out what the chinese name was.

for example, Super Brand Mall is called Zheng Da Guang Chang 正大广场。see what i mean in finding out the chinese name of the place? but with this really convenient app, all you have to do is search for your location and voila! address and location name in characters for your taxi driver's convenience and your peace of mind.

they have it for Beijing as well so if you're in the area, download it for uber convenience!

3. Zhongwen Chinese Pop-up Dictionary 

i recommend using Google Chrome as your internet browser when in China because of this really amazing life-saving extension/app! chances are when you're surfing around local chinese sites, everything will be in chinese and while google has an excellent translation tool that translates the whole page to your desired language, i find myself sometimes needing to read particular words in their original language and finding out the pinyin for certain words.

simply hover your mouse above the word and there'll be a complete description of the word! how convenient is that? this way, i was able to enhance my learning experience and extend it to the online world as well besides just learning from my textbook.

so this is it for moving around when in Shanghai.

i've got a confession, i've had this post sitting in my draft for close to 2 weeks! been a lil' busy what with Christmas coming but i'll try to churn out a new post soon on what i've done and seen when i was in Shanghai and Beijing.