China Day Three, Part III - Shanghai, Renmin Park

Sunday, April 6th, 2008





At one of the ends of Nanjing Road was an underpass that led to RENMIN PARK, a.k.a., THE PEOPLE'S PARK. We followed the crowd down and emerged at the outskirts of the park:





We saw this HUGE sculpture. It looked like 3-D graffiti...but it was probably some sort of chinese character:





We tried to take a photo in front of this Futurist/Cubist-looking statue, but there was too many people posing with it. An old Chinese man who was by himself asked us to take a picture of him with his camera...he didn't speak a word of english, but we understood that he needed our help...I should have took his picture instead of the statue...



We crossed the street to access a different part of the park...



We found this pretty garden...and then a little lake. A lot of people were hanging out around the lake - some were even fishing...







Wandering around, we managed to discover the Museum Of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Shanghai...since we had time to kill, we decided to go in and check out the exhibition they had for famous "Shoemaker To The Stars", SALVATORE FERRAGAMO...















One part of the exhibit had these cool little display rooms shaped like handbags and shoes...







We ran into a group tour and saw a bunch of people lounging on shoe-shaped chairs while the tour guide did her spiel:





They had a paint-splattered Ferragamo shoe that used to belong to ANDY WARHOL...





After stopping at the museum gift shop, we headed back out into the wilds of Renmin Park...





We found the children's area of the park, which was awesome! They had all these kiddie amusment park rides, including this crazy high-rise merry-go-round with funky monkey and monchichi motifs...











...they even had a little area where little kids could draw and craft...how cool is that?



Missy and I were drawn to a section of the park where a group of people were gathering across from a rocket ride...







Turns out they were gathered around this little pool and they were fishing for GOLDFISH! Everytime someone caught one (on a real hook!), they'd pull it off and place it in a bucket. It was a very different take on a popular midway-style game...







After consulting our map, we decided to head back down Nanjing Road on our way to visit THE BUND...on the way there we stopped in to another mall and Missy bought some clothes...the mall was set up so that if you wanted to make a credit card purchase, there was one desk per floor that handled credit card transactions for all the stores on that level...we had trouble at one desk, then had to move to the next floor, had trouble at THAT DESK, then had to move to another level...we kept riding the escalator until we found a desk that could process Missy's card...



(Missy chuckling at her misfortune while following the salesgirl who rang her up, from floor to floor)



We worked our way back up to the top floor of the mall so we could take these photos of Nanjing Road, out of a dirty window...





There were some discarded window display props near by and Missy chose to pose with an "M" (no "R" for me, boo)...