Barbara J. Hamby

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Shanghai’d in Shanghai

Shanghai Harbor

When we arose this morning our ship was berthed on the Huangpu River. At 6:45 announcements began for people on the earliest tours to report to a lounge to be eyeballed by Chinese Immigration officials while temporarily holding passports. As soon as each passenger went through Immigration inspection, the passport was turned back in to ship’s personnel. Our turn to be scrutinized came at about 7:15. After that Al had breakfast and went ashore as soon as possible, while I ate breakfast with a couple from London. They talked about other cruises they had taken and their visits to the U.S. including South Dakota and California.

Later in the morning we watched the heavy boat and ship traffic going both ways past our ship and took pictures. I had a snack around 11:30 since our tour was due to leave at 12:15. Al said he had three breakfasts, so wasn’t hungry. We boarded our tour bus and rode for some distance through Shanghai. The tour we had chosen was called Old and New Shanghai, and included several stops, one at a garden, one at a museum, and one at a hilltop viewpoint. At the first stop we were in the back of the group and while crossing a street, I narrowly avoided (with Al’s help) being hit by a speeding vehicle that neither slowed, nor swerved to miss me. We continued following what we thought was our tour group, but apparently they had turned in another direction while our attention was diverted. We discovered the group we were in was from Denmark and didn’t speak English. 

After diligent search in pouring rain, and waiting in a downpour at the bus stop where we had started the tour, we decided we were not going to find our group, our guide, our bus or any bus going back to our ship. So we were stranded in downtown Shanghai without our passports, with no Chinese money, and very little identification. Al had his driver’s license with him. I did not.

We located a man who spoke English at a nearby office building, who attempted to help us. He finally got a police officer and told us the officer would take us to the American Embassy. I thought, Oh boy, a ride in a Shanghai police car! No such luck. The officer put us in a taxi and told the driver where to take us. He delivered us to a heavily guarded facility where we were told that the American Citizen Services (across town) was where we should be. While we were getting the address in Chinese for the cab driver, a young American woman came to our rescue. She reminded me of Carrie, my daughter-in-law, with the same color hair and the same general age and her name is Carolyn (Norton). She made some phone calls on her cell phone, found out where our ship was located, and got us in a cab with instructions to the driver to drop us off where we could see the ship. Then she insisted on giving us cab fare in Chinese currency. We tried to pay her in dollars, but she refused and told us to donate them to the poor.

Looking like drowned rats, we got back to the ship three harrowing hours after we left. I suspect I overpaid the first cab driver by several times the fare because I had to give him dollars and didn’t know the exact exchange rate. I’d forgotten it already. We decided to go to our cabin, get into dry clothes and calm down, before we reported our plight to the tour representatives on the ship. In addition to all the other hassle, we had been encouraged to leave our bag on the bus. Al’s jacket was in it, and a few other odds and ends. We had taken our cameras with us.

Ship personnel located our bag and sent it to our cabin. They offered to let us take the same tour the next morning or get a refund. I didn’t feel up to a possible repeat of that day’s fiasco, so asked for the refund. In the process of riding around in cabs for an hour or more, we had seen a lot of the city. I was impressed by the number of trees in the downtown area. One was covered with pink blossoms.

Some of the retail shops strongly resembled ones we had seen in Mexico. The many street vendors were also reminiscent of Mexico. We saw several disfigured beggars. Al was surprised by that, since he had read about how the Communists took care of their disabled people and claimed there were no beggars in China.

After a supper of sandwiches and coffee, we relaxed and took pictures of decoratively lighted boats as they ran up and down the river. Then we went to the evening performance of young Chinese acrobats. The performance was wonderful. Our visibility was not. We’d been encouraged to bring cameras and take pictures. We found it difficult to use the cameras from the audience and left before the end of the show.

As I reflected on our afternoon in Shanghai, I recalled that the guide had spent some time when we first left the pier telling us his Chinese and American names and explaining that his Chinese name meant “Magnificent One.” He suggested, that if we couldn’t remember his name, we just call him “Mr. Magnificent.” After observing how poorly he did his job, I had some other names in mind.

All in all, it was a disappointing day.