CHINA: Marriage Markets, Rylan and Replica English Towns in Shanghai

Atlas Obscura is always the first website that I fire up before visiting somewhere new. History, landmarks, tourist attractions, nightlife, beaches are all well and good, but I’m really interested in the weird shit.

Shanghai came through for me. But in order to get there, I had to leave the similarly weird city of Dandong, on the North Korean border.

I didn’t get about much in Dandong due to a shortage of time and the fact that it was -13 degrees celsius, but I did manage to find a bloomin’ Tesco, a literal stone’s throw from the world’s most secretive of countries.

Forgot my Clubcard didn’t I

Found this huge poster on the side of a building too. Always good.

I arrived in Shanghai to find the most beautiful of hostels.

It even had a fish pond.

Sadly, things weren’t as they seemed, and the hostel room included a faded yellow mattress, a sick-yellow duvet and a pillow which smelt like everyone’s Grandma’s house. My disappointment in my dwellings was confounded by the fact that no toilets had toilet paper provided. A two minute walk (or waddle in one case) down to reception was needed to claim toilet paper from behind the reception desk before you could do your business. What the shite is that all about.

I ventured out and ended up down at the most famous of Shanghai’s attractions, The Bund. A stunning skyline lay in wait:

As did the tourists.

The pathetic blurriness of my photos encouraged me to invest in a real camera once I got to Korea. So now I have to go back.

As you might expect, bright lights and tall buildings were the order of the day in Shanghai, but that’s not what I came for.

I took the underground Bund tunnel, which was halfway between spellbinding and bit crappy. It felt a little bit 2001: A Space Odyssey. But only a little.

Next to the tunnel there’s a host of underground activities. I gave the aquarium a miss but at the cost of £5 to enter both the ‘world of wonders’ and the ‘Korean crazy perspective museum’, I couldn’t resist. What I found was a very low rent version of Ripley’s Believe it or Not (if you can imagine such a thing). Here’s some highlights:

Yep.

Probably the best exhibition of ‘a little girl playing (imaginary) mobile’ I’ve ever seen

‘Most people of the needle head’

The last thing I was expecting to see in China was X-Factor luminary Rylan Clark, but see him I did:

Pretty harsh to be fair to the lad.

The Korean perspective museum was about as poor as you’d expect. I could have had my photo taken with Psy here, but I chose to get one with some mermaids instead.

All kinds of weird.

The next day was spent in Shaghai’s People’s Park, which is rather lovely:

I didn’t come for the nature. I came for the marriage market. Hundreds of parents line the paths of the park each week hoping to find a husband or wife for their child.

The parents write up the important details of their kids- height, weight, occupation, a description of their looks, and an occasional photograph, and then laminate it and stick it to the top of an umbrella, for some inexplicable reason.

From there it’s a long slog. Standing around for days on end, talking to other parents and passers-by, looking for the perfect match for their grown-up children. Whether the kids even know that the parents are doing this or not is unknown.

People work very long hours in Shanghai so it’s perhaps understandable that the focus on finding a mate would lay with the parents.

I did not qualify.

Some parents opted for a shopping trolley instead of an umbrella.

And for some, the search was just too exhausting…

On the outskirts of Shanghai there’s a place called Thames Town. Built in 2001, and designed to house 10,000 people, Thames Town was a part of a failed initiative to entice people out of the city centre.

By all accounts, few people now live in Thames Town, but it still feels like a bustling English town, due to the huge popularity it has as a wedding venue. I saw at least a dozen couples in their wedding gear, and this was in the middle of winter.

The town is eerily like an English town. There’s a few design flaws of course, and it still has that slightly bonkers Chinese feel, but if I squinted it really did feel like being home.

It had everything you’d expect from an English town:

• Road safety.

• Postboxes

• Churches

• Red telephone boxes (didn’t photograph one though, d’oh)
• (Mock) Tudor buildings

• Wheelie Bins

• Statues of Princess Diana and James Bond

• And the most English of traditions, seven foot tall Optimus Prime statues outside of pubs

Here’s some more photos.

They even had the English version of Father Christmas down to a tee, complete with his traditional saxophone:

This was on the inside of the church, of course.

The starkest reminder that I wasn’t home was the disgraceful lack of roundabouts.

Normally I’d be delighted by finding this little beaut in a foreign country…

…but it turns out that the Chinese LOVE Shaun the Sheep, so much so that it plays on the TV screens on the metro.

I think the following is meant as a ‘let’s learn English!’ slogan, but it comes off a little scary…

Here’s some other things.

Happy New Yaer to you all.

When the posh desperately need a shite.

I finished my visit to Shanghai, and started 2017, with a NYD trip to Disneyland, because fuck it, I’m on holiday.

Pirates of the Carribean was hashtag decent. The other big rides had waiting times of 150+ minutes, and screw that.

Even monks chuffing love Disney

I’ll leave you with this. Bye.