Travel By Photo – Shanghai Night & HuangPu River Cruise

Shanghai is located in eastern coast of China, north of Taiwan and South of Korea, having a coordinate reading of 31°12′0″N 121°30′0″E. With a sub-tropical climate geographically, Shanghai is experiencing 4 distinct seasons every year. It was end of Autumn towards Winter when we were there in November with a cold tmeperature of 18°C at noon and 6°C during night time. Due to its high humid air, the whole Shanghai city was covered by a thick mist and its visibility was up to a few Kilometers only! I’m not sure about other seasons since I haven’t been through, but this was definitely a sad discovery to me, in terms of photo taking where sceneries beyond like 4 KM was inevitably dissappeared in the mist.

However, the night in Shanghai was totally different. The air suddenly cleared up, perhaps with the help of those magnificient building lighting lit up, Shanghai was eventually turned alive and started to show its glamour! That is why ‘Shanghai Night’ is so well perceived as the main Shanghai attraction!

After spending slightly more than an hour at our first destination in Shanghai, we left ChengHuangMiao for our dinner. As for an all-inclusive travel package, dinner was arranged well ahead at one of the local restaurant and 9 courses were served with local beers as standard beverage option. Nothing to shout about, dinner was acceptable with some unique local taste. What attracted me was the wild lighting around the restaurant. I took a photo of my wife posing in front of a waterwheel of the restaurant which I love it every much.

After the dinner, we headed straight to the Bund to catch a night cruise along HuangPu Jiang, the main river of Shanghai separating the city into PuXi and PuDong districts. While PuXi is the older district siting many of the financial instituitions along the famous ‘Shanghai Bund’, PuDong is the upcoming business district featuring many of the younger entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Cruising along HuangPu river is a very good ideas to admire the beauty of ‘Shanghai Night’, though standing on the shipboard fighting the freezing 5°C cold wind was a bit crazy! Who cares! I enjoyed every minute of it.

Com’on honey! Let’s pose in front of The Bund Yacht Club….

What a beautiful night scene of PuXi. Tourists could even spot advertisement in the air… 🙂

Something crossed over my mind… how much the Shanghai council pays for the electricity bill every night?

Thanks to the idea and initiatives of the late leader of China Communists Party, Mr. Deng Xiao Ping, PuXi (photo above) and PuDong (photo below) are now show little difference in terms of city developments.

The most significant landmark of PuDong district is Oriental Pearl Tower. It is the tallest telecommunication tower in Asia and is the third tallest in the world. I would say it’s the most beautiful TV tower in the world. Looking at the two giant spheres with 5 ‘legs’ supporting it, the futuristic design of Oriental Pearl Tower (photo below) attracts more than 5 millions visitors every year!

We docked after cruising HuangPu River for around 3 quaters of an hour and took the double-decked lift up to the observation floor of Oriental Pearl at 263m high, in a thundering 40 seconds!

From the observatory floor, we could oversee the Shanghai city night scene clearly and there was a board indicating the name of those 40 important buildings at the Bund.

Click Here to view lightbox for this photo set in full resolution via Flickr

We wrapped up our Day 1 journey at a very nice 4-star hotel, Oriental Express. Looking at my watch, it was already 11pm….. If you wish to know more on our trip to HangZhou, follow along us by subscribing to our feeds – Travel Feeder.

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.