The business trip to Shanghai was a lot of fun, even the part where I had three straight days of back-to-back meetings. But as cameras aren't allowed at meetings that left me only 3 days to take my photos of Shanghai. Here are some highlights.


This pic shows the clouds reflected over a nice blue ocean:



The weather in the first few days was ridiculously sunny. That's why I got an unimpended view of the outskirts of Shanghai as we flew in:



I had no idea that China was so blocky.


My travel desk said my hotel was 4 star, but the first thing we saw at the hotel desk was "5 star hotel". And I had a five-star view at least:






Which was even more breathtaking at night. Unfortunately my camera is a tropical camera and froze up in the cold. So I could only get shots after my camera had warmed up enough, but which was after the World Financial Center and the Pearl Tower had shut off their lights. ;_; Still, the other lights were just as pretty, and I got to see the two buildings set off their nightly light display before going to sleep.









It wasn't too big a loss, because this is a sight that I saw during lunch for the 3 days of endless meetings:




And from the 17th floor of the building we were working in, we had an unimpended view of the Pearl Tower. Our meeting room also had an awesome view of the river. So I have a lot of mental shots of Shanghai - just not physical ones.


I did get a lot of physical shots of Yuyuan, which is a very fancy garden cum house built by a very wealthy Shanghaiese for his father. This is the stone just inside the main gate, which has the title of the place:



Just immediately inside is a very nice koi pond:






I decided to join the fish watchers:



And then walked long distances through a lot of gates like this one:



Still, the amount of detail poured into this place was breathtaking. Each gate and main door had a different set of carved lions. Even little details like this:



And this:



But it was all worth it, because eventually we came across this:



And this:



You could even see the World Financial Centre in the distant background:



We went sightseeing by the river, but it was foggy. Samples (taken with my handphone because my camera did NOT appreciate the weather):






Still, fog aside, Chinese New Year was still going strong:



It was a fun trip! I'm looking forward to travelling more in the future. In the meantime, here's wishing you a HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR in the year of the TIGER!