806

Almost two years ago I found Taikang Lu in Shanghai. Today I found bus route 806 which takes me from my home to Taikang Lu. If you've been with me for awhile you'll know that Taikang Lu is an artsy neighborhood buried in an area of back alleys in south Shanghai. I had been spending as much as 50 rmb to get there by taxi but now that I can get there for 3 rmb I'm happy. The bus is really just as fast as the taxi and much more reliable on a rainy day like today.

Why did it take me so long to find this route? Well, partly because there are no maps of bus routes in Shanghai - just published lists of routes and stops along the route - and only in Chinese. Trying to piece this information together into a spatial sense of how to get from point A to point B is really challenging. Why Shanghai doesn't have an online site with maps of routes or anything available in English for tourists and expats is beyond me.

Having solved this particular problem of getting to Taikang Lu we had a couple of slices of cheese pizza at New York Pizza and wandered around the alleys and shops for a couple of hours. This area is very popular with Shanghai's amateur photographers who seem to spare no expense when it comes to getting the best and latest equipment. The alleys become impromptu photo shoots - almost invariably photographers taking pictures of young models or model wannabes while an assistant stands by with a large aluminum reflector - blocking the tiny alleys. It's next to impossible to walk the alleys and not be constantly in the crossfire between dueling photographers shooting this way and that.

Having disrupted enough photo shoots we walked north to Huaihai Lu ("lu" means road) and had an early dinner at Vegetarian Lifestyle.