Shanghai shopping and pandaphone probs

A cold front moved across China over the night and brought freezing temperatures with it to Shanghai today. The wind outside is icy although there is no rain or snow. We took the maglev train and subway again into the city to do some shopping--mainly gifts for people who have been looking after our home for us. Of course we wanted to buy traditional Chinese crafts as gifts. I'd seen an incredible selection of these types of things in Beijing on Wangfujing Street and presumed that Nanjing Rd would have a similar selection. Boy were we disappointed! There was almost nothing traditionally Chinese available to be found. We came across one store called Pearl City which had a variety of Chinese goods. But nothing like the selection of Beijing. The store was even partly boarded up--ie sections of some of the floors weren't being used. I don't know where the Chinese goods are in Shanghai but they're not on Nanjing Rd and we didn't have the time or inclination to go looking all over the place for them. We did make a couple of purchases which fit the bill, however, but I was disappointed in not being able to choose from a wide selection.

After this we had lunch then walked around some of the nearby streets. Even one block away from Nanjing Rd. the buildings are all pretty run down. Some are so derelict they are boarded up. I think with all the publicity about its glittering skyscrapers the fact that Shanghai still has a massive job ahead of itself to fully modernise gets a bit hidden. I know there are parts of New York City that are also pretty decrepit. I had thought, however, that Shanghai had come farther than it has in the past 7 years in its massive task of renovation and renewal. The view we had from the Oriental Pearl Tower was one looking out on a massive bomb-like site/building site. It's hard to tell which.

So Shanghai is still a mixed bag of new buildings and old. Beijing on the other hand seems to be much farther ahead in its modernisation. In Shanghai though people don't hawk and spit on the streets like they do in Beijing and many other Chinese cities.

So this is our last day in China. We will be in Singapore, hopefully recovering from our colds/flu for three days. I expect that whatever hotel we end up there will charge us for internet usage. In China free hotel/hostel broadband internet access has been a given (except for the Majestic Hotel in Nanning).

Now, what of our pandaphones? They were delivered to us at the Majestic in Nanning and the original arrangement was that we were going to leave them at the hostel where we were going to stay in Shanghai. When we cancelled our booking there and booked in at the hotel at the airport I thought it would be easy to just notify pandaphone that we were leaving our phones here. But then--a problem! The hotel won't let us leave the phones with them for pickup! They just don't want to take responsibility for them. In fact one of the hotel staff suggested that I just keep the phones! He obviously has no concept that their value would be charged to my credit card! So there have been a number of calls to and from pandaphone today and chats with the hotel people but all to no avail. It seems ridiculous that pandaphone's office is in Shanghai, we are in Shanghai but there is no way for us to leave the phones here! So we have to take them with us back to Australia and then mail them to the United States. We can't even mail them back to China from Singapore as the Chinese postal system doesn't allow phones to be mailed. Maybe pandaphone should think of opening up an office in Australia?