If Shanghai is ever on your radar to visit may I suggest you plan your trip for late April/May or October/November.
December and January are pretty grim – think cold and damp, grey skies and grey air.
July and August are hot, sticky and humid.
But May is typically good and the weather the last six weeks or so has been nothing short of glorious.
Blue skies {yes we do have them}, normal air levels and quite lovely temperatures around mid to late 20’s have been the order of the day for May.I know I share this view from our living room a lot – but it never ceases to fascinate me.
New and old Shanghai live side by side, the beeps and shouts from the street 20 floors down permeate the apartment even with closed doors and windows, the traffic lights changing at the bottom of the road catch my eye as I walk through to the kitchen, the tennis court on the left {the blue building} with Porsches and Mercedes parked outside opposite the bike repair man who charges 1RMB to pump up tyres, the school below {red roof on the right} that randomly plays Jingle Bells occasionally to mark the end of the school day….all of Shanghai’s rich tapestry is laid out there right in front of my eyes.
I’d like to say the running outside has been a pleasure, but anyone who has had to dodge pavement oysters and cars and bikes making a beeline for them will know this is probably a stretch too far!!! It has been wonderful though the last few weeks to be able to run in the great outdoors taking in big lungfuls of air instead of resorting to the treadmill.
When Rich’s Mum arrived and walked onto our balcony the view literally took her breath away and she couldn’t believe she was in Shanghai.
And then we took her to Vue Bar at the Hyatt on the Bund for a drink on a crystal clear evening. When she walked out onto the platform area she thought she’d walked through a wormhole and straight into the future.
The Shanghai Tower {the one with the diagonal line of lights in the back} is the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa and tenants are starting to move in. I heard that 30,000 people will be working there in one capacity or another – in retail, offices, F&B and a hotel too.
It’s still difficult to believe that was all farmland across the river until it started being developed around 1986.
Right on cue with the arrival of June, the rainy season checked in on Tuesday.
The next month will look something like this:
- 1-2 cool days followed by
- 2-3 warm/hot days followed by
- 1-2 rainy days
repeat above!
The warm days will turn into hot and sticky days and suddenly we will notice that it’s stopped raining, the cicadas will be singing ear piercingly loud in those tree lined streets you can see from our balcony and the searing heat of summer will be here to stay for a couple of months.
So today, I’m looking out there and pinching myself yet again that I live in Shanghai. It never ceases to amaze me that I type those words.
I wish I could take you for a walk around my hood in May – you’d see a totally different side to the China you read about.
When’s the best time to visit your hood?