Goji Island Shanghai-Jiangsu Travel with New Internet-Famous Spots

Duration: 6 days. Companion: Alone. Activities: Photography, Cultural Exploration, Group Tour. The author visited the following places: Shanghai Grand View Garden, Si Nan Mansion, Fuxing Middle Road, Time Alley, City God Temple, Shanghai City God Temple Nine-Turn Bridge. Published on 2020-12-07 09:43. Goji Island Shanghai-Jiangsu Travel: 1. New Internet-Famous Spots with Companionship of Mei Ling Plane Trees Introduction: Mother Earth nurtures thousands of mountains and rivers, strange peaks and unique harbors, and people have been contributing to it for generations, adding bricks and tiles with the passage of time to accumulate the beauty of the scenery. The journey to Goji Island, Shanghai, and Jiangsu allowed me to feel the pulse of nature and human history. On 2020/10/26, I arrived at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport at noon (this was my second time in Shanghai, the first time was five years ago for the wisteria flowers, and this time it was for Goji Island). The airport was really big, and I was like an old lady entering the Grand View Garden, unable to find the tour guide’s pick-up spot. Since I didn’t have any checked luggage, I actually left the airport directly. Seeing that it was not the right way, I called the tour guide, and he asked me to go back in. After coming down from the elevator, I finally met the tour guide at the luggage collection exit. The itinerary was packed tight, and in the afternoon, I visited three new internet-famous spots. Shanghai Happy Gathering is one of the new internet-famous bookstores in Shanghai. The trees planted along the roadside are all of the same kind, and as autumn arrives, the leaves start to turn yellow. The tour guide said they were French plane trees, but they do not originate from France; instead, they come from Yunnan. It was one of the five things Chiang Kai-shek did for Song Meiling because he loved her. That year, Song Meiling said she liked plane trees, so he sent people to Yunnan to buy 20,000 trees and planted them all over Nanjing. Each plane tree symbolizes Chiang Kai-shek’s unchanging sincerity towards Song Meiling. Subsequently, places like Shanghai also started planting French plane trees. This story is very touching, and it’s hard to imagine that Old Jiang had such feelings. Thus, there is a saying: to love someone, give a city; to love a tree, plant it all over Nanjing City. The original site of Happy Gathering was the Shanghai Rubber Research Institute, which was later transformed into Happy Gathering by designer Huang Quan. The design of Happy Gathering also comes from his hands. As an internet-famous spot, it has attracted many literary youth and trend-conscious people to come and check in. Happy Gathering consists of three floors, which are not absolutely separated but instead use a ‘mezzanine’ design to functionally separate into five areas: books, clothing, cultural and creative products, coffee and light food, and events. The first floor sells clothing, all brand-name goods, with the window and door positions designed as a coffee shop. You can sit down for a cup of coffee when you are tired from shopping, and it is especially welcome to come here just to taste the coffee; the second floor displays a large number of selected foreign magazines on themes of fashion, culture, and food in the form of a row of desks, and the display position is located at the entrance of the second floor, very eye-catching. This is that internet-famous bookstore.
Apart from magazines, the second floor also displays art books and cultural and creative products. Next to the bookshelves, there are steps with several cushions where you can take a book and sit down casually. No one will bother you until the bookstore closes, and it’s also an excellent place to take styled photos. Essentially, it should be a bookstore, but it differs from traditional bookstores, just like its name, ‘Ji Hui,’ which is located in ‘Xingfu Li,’ implying happiness. It’s a collection of books, clothing, shoes, accessories, and beverages and snacks. ‘Xingfu Ji Hui,’ indeed wonderful! The store has two floors, designed with great creativity, modern atmosphere, stylish yet elegant, and it’s very enjoyable to experience this ambiance. However, compared to Harbin’s Gogol Bookstore, it’s far from comparable. Columbia Circle is a mysterious area that has never been open to the public since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Originally a foreign alleyway, it was named Columbia Country Club, built in 1924 by the American consulate as a social venue for leisure, entertainment, and living for British and American expatriates in Shanghai. The architecture has perfectly preserved the characteristics of more than 70 years of history. Through the direct sunlight, it seems you can still smell the air of old history. The most famous spot here is a vacation-style Moroccan-style Tiffany blue swimming pool, which makes this place feel like Morocco in an instant. The mosaic facade combined with the azure pool water, no matter how you photograph it, is likely to be the most fashionable blockbuster. It is said that many celebrities come here to check in! This is the only swimming pool in Shanghai that still retains British standards, originally an open-air pool of the Navy Club, with Spanish-style buildings on either side, archways echoing the pool, making one feel somewhat disoriented about where they are. Around the pool, there are many internet-famous restaurants. Enjoying delicious food while taking 360-degree views and photos without dead angles should be great, but we had no time to enjoy it, only taking a few photos in a hurry. This Baroque-style building was originally the ‘Shanghai Institute of Biological Products,’ commonly referred to as ‘Shang Sheng Suo,’ and had never been open to the public. Now it has finally unveiled its mysterious veil. On the wall, part of the historical records in the park, there is a row of ‘color-changing’ doors. The color seen from different places or angles is different, red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, gathering all the colors of the rainbow. Sun Ke’s Former Residence: Sun Ke, the son of Sun Yat-sen, this small western-style house was designed by Laszlo Hudec, integrating multiple styles such as Spanish, Baroque, and Italian Renaissance. Sinan Open-Air Museum: In the Sinan Mansions shaded by plane trees, there is an ‘open-air museum’ without walls, glass display cases, fences, admission fees, or one-meter lines. Established in 2016, it is a century-old humanities museum that is always open and never ends in the Sinan Mansions, yet it is updated daily.

Everything here, whether you can imagine it or not, could be an exhibit. Unlike the exhibits in traditional museums that are coldly separated by glass and forcefully blocked by railings, making one feel awed, open-air museums focus more on getting close to the exhibits, entering them, and comprehending them. All exhibits are vivid and natural, with less solemnity and more intimacy. Here, perhaps inadvertently walking, you may step on an exhibit. The ‘Sinan Open-Air Museum’ has an extraordinary exhibition space, gathering various architectural forms such as detached garden houses, attached garden houses, row houses, veranda-style buildings, new-style alleys, and modern apartments, making it a concentrated area of modern residential architecture in Shanghai. Many buildings here record precious history, and the well-known story of Mei Lanfang ‘growing a beard to clarify his ambition’ took place here. No. 533 Fuxing Middle Road was once home to a top student who graduated from Yale University in the United States at the age of 27 with a master’s degree in physics and chemistry, and entered politics at the age of 44, serving as the Finance Minister of the then Nationalist government, among other positions, and made contributions to currency reform, the peaceful resolution of the Xi’an Incident, and raising funds for the war against Japan. In addition to old houses, the exhibits also include street lamps, ancient trees, red brick paths, and cobblestone walls. Each exhibit’s exterior wall has a shield-shaped logo with a unique QR code. By scanning the QR code with WeChat on a mobile phone, you can listen to the voice introduction of the exhibit recorded by ‘ordinary people’. Unfortunately, we did not have time to listen to the voice introductions, missing a great learning opportunity. Here, there are the old residences of famous scholars who inherit the cultural context, the silent growth of plane tree shades, and the still-breathing cobblestone walls… The history here is not under a glass cover but in everyone’s perception and continuous creation. It is related to many celebrities, including Zhou Enlai, Mei Lanfang, Liu Yazi, Li Liejun, Cheng Qian, Xue Du, Zeng Pu, and so on. There is also the ‘Sinan Open-Air Museum·Time Lane’, connecting the past and the future. A ‘Time Lane’ is located in the northern part of the center of the Sinan Mansion, connecting Fuxing Middle Road in the north and the main street inside the Sinan Mansion in the south. It is an alley about 2-3 meters wide and about 30 meters long. In this narrow linear tunnel, the past, present, and future of Sinan are strung together. Here, an array of 26 two-way mirrors is tightly arranged on both walls. History is a multi-faceted mirror that can reflect colorful light. The golden mirror surface of stainless steel material, set against a black background, interacts with visiting tourists, and the moving visitors seem to be walking in their own 26 overlapping shadows, as if walking through history with countless ‘I’s from different times.
History and the present are engaged in a warm and profound dialogue here. In Time Alley, there are Feng Yuxiang, Mei Lanfang, Zhang Xueliang… and also us now. Some of the exhibits in the entire open-air museum are buildings, some are the people in the buildings, and some may be street lamps, ancient trees, cobblestone walls, etc. All of these have little-known stories one after another and carry a heavy historical accumulation. In this open-air museum without glass showcases or fences, people are both visitors to history and creators of history. The past is not far away, and the future has arrived. The environment here is excellent, and the architecture is unbeatable. Every Western-style house, every staircase, and every alley are worth taking pictures. I still want to quietly experience it again. For dinner, we had Shanghai cuisine. In my impression, Shanghai cuisine is rather sweet, but these dishes are very salty. Later, we went to the City God Temple to see the night view. Seeing Sister Xiaowen from the same group taking pictures, I went over and struck up a conversation with her: ‘I’m afraid of getting lost. I’ll follow you all.’ Sister Xiaowen said: ‘Sure, sure.’ She is a woman with a rare strong sense of direction. There is an old saying in Shanghai: ‘If you don’t go to the City God Temple when you come to Shanghai, it’s like you haven’t been to Greater Shanghai.’ The City God Temple has become a landmark scenic spot in Shanghai. The City God Temple originated from the ancient sacrifices to water (huang) and moat (cheng) and is one of the eight gods in the ‘Zhou Palace’. In ancient times, people built cities to protect the safety of the people in the city, so they built tall city walls, towers, city gates, moats, and city moats. This is the origin of the City God Temple. The lights are bright and splendid. The ancient buildings are blurred and mysterious under the illumination of lights. Perhaps due to the impact of the epidemic, there are many fewer tourists. There are many characteristic shops, restaurants, pastry shops, gardens, etc. in the City God Temple. First of all, let’s talk about the series of delicious foods here. The snacks in the Shanghai City God Temple are extremely abundant and too numerous to mention. After entering, it is simply dazzling: Nanxiang steamed buns, barbecued pork buns, barbecue, large pork noodle, three-shredded spring rolls, purple rice balls, checkerboard cakes, crown lantern dumplings (in the shape of a hat), prosperous fish ball soup, pea-flour crystal cakes… Changsha stinky tofu and old yogurt that are not locally produced in Shanghai are also setting up stalls and opening shops here. You can eat your fill. The City God Temple in Shanghai is famous for operating various Shanghai-style snacks. In the area of the City God Temple food street, it can even be called a kingdom of snacks. The characteristic pastries of Green Wave Corridor, the vegetarian buns of Songyuelou, the eight-treasure rice pudding of Songyunlou, Nanxiang steamed buns (it is said that there is always a long queue here all day long just to buy Nanxiang steamed buns), Ningbo dumplings and fermented glutinous rice balls are all delicious snacks that cannot be missed when traveling in Shanghai. In addition to local specialty snacks, there is also a variety of different characteristic flavors from all over the place in this area around the City God Temple. Looking around on the winding old street along the line, you can see all kinds of restaurants, dining halls, and food stores everywhere. In the bustling crowd, you can see people holding freshly baked buns and pastries. All of this makes this place another enduring ‘food paradise’ in this city. All kinds of tempting flavors are constantly interpreting the connotations of ‘old temple snacks’ and ‘Shanghai-style dishes’. Those unforgettable delicacies and these familiar names are the common memories of several generations of Shanghainese and are also deeply imprinted in this city.
In this historic landmark steeped in ancient charm and teeming with tourists, its distinctive style continues to accumulate. There is also the long-standing Lao Feng Xiang shop, as well as vendors selling silk scarves, clothing, White Rabbit milk candies, plum candies, and more, with a wide variety of products available for purchase. The night view of the City God Temple can be described as resplendent and magnificent, akin to royal grandeur, with all the lighting designed to highlight its grandeur and majesty. The Jiuqu Bridge, with its nine turns and eighteen bends, each with varying angles—some greater than 90 degrees, some less—now has a bridge surface made of granite slabs. Each bend features a carving of a seasonal flower on a slab, such as narcissus in January, apricot blossoms in February, peach blossoms in March, and so on, up to wintersweet in December. Additionally, two slabs at the head and tail of the Jiuqu Bridge each bear a carving of a lotus flower. On the bridge section in front of the Huxinting Teahouse, a lotus flower is carved in the center, with clouds carved at the four corners. The white marble sculpture of a lotus fairy in the pond stands gracefully, smiling to welcome every visitor. Walking across the Jiuqu Bridge, one is surrounded by newly renovated ancient buildings with red walls and tile roofs in Taoist style, making the pavilions and towers exude an air of ancient charm. If one could sit by the window of a restaurant next to the Jiuqu Bridge, order a plate of soup dumplings and a bowl of wonton soup, and watch the red koi fish swimming in the lake, what a delightful experience it would be! (3685 2020/11/20)

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