Published on 2020-12-07 09:43.
Goji Island Shanghai-Jiangsu Tour
1. The Emerging Internet Celebrity Spots with Soong May-ling’s Plane Trees Introduction: Mother Earth nurtures thousands of mountains and rivers, strange peaks and unique ports, with generations of people contributing to the landscape, accumulating the beauty of the scenery over time. The Goji Island, Shanghai, and Jiangsu tour allowed me to feel the pulse of natural law and cultural history.
On 2020/10/26, I arrived at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport at noon (this was my second time in Shanghai, the first time was five years ago, for the wisteria flowers, this time for Goji Island). The airport was really large, and I felt like Liu Laolao entering the Grand View Garden, unable to find the guide’s meeting spot. Since I didn’t have any checked luggage, I actually left the airport directly. Seeing that it was not the right way, I called the guide, and he told me to go back in and come down the elevator. Finally, I met the guide at the luggage collection exit.
The itinerary was tightly packed, and in the afternoon, I visited three emerging internet celebrity check-in spots. Shanghai Happy Gathering is one of the new internet celebrity bookstores in Shanghai. The trees planted along the roadside are all of one kind, and as autumn comes, the leaves start to turn yellow. The guide said that they are French plane trees, but they do not originate from France, but from Yunnan. It was one of the five things Chiang Kai-shek did for Soong May-ling.
Places in Shanghai
This is the only swimming pool in Shanghai that still retains British Imperial measurements, originally an open-air pool of the Navy Club. The Spanish-style buildings on either side, with their arches echoing the pool, create a sense of disorientation about one’s location. Surrounding the pool, numerous popular restaurants have been established, offering a 360-degree view and photo opportunities while enjoying the cuisine, which should be quite impressive. However, we were too busy to savor the experience and only managed to take a few quick photos.
This Baroque-style building was originally the ‘Shanghai Institute of Biological Products,’ commonly referred to as ‘Shang Sheng Suo,’ and had never been open to the public before, now finally unveiling its mysterious veil.
On the walls of the historical record park, there is a row of ‘color-changing’ doors. Depending on where you stand or the angle from which you view them, the colors vary, including red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple, collecting all the colors of the rainbow.
Sun Ke’s former residence, Sun Ke, the son of Sun Yat-sen, had this small western-style house designed by Hudec, integrating various styles such as Spanish, Baroque, and Italian Renaissance.
In the Si Nan Mansion, shaded by plane trees, there is an ‘open-air museum’ without walls, glass display cases, fences, entrance fees, or one-meter lines. Established in 2016, it is a century-old humanities museum that is always open and never ends, yet is updated daily. Everything here, whether you can imagine it or not, could be an exhibit. Compared to the exhibits in traditional museums that are separated by cold glass and strong railings, which evoke a sense of reverence, the open-air museum focuses more on approaching, entering, and understanding the exhibits. All exhibits are vivid and natural, less serious, and more intimate. Here, you might inadvertently step on an exhibit while walking around. The ‘Si Nan Open-Air Museum’ has an extraordinary display space, gathering various architectural forms such as detached garden houses, attached garden houses, row houses, veranda-style buildings, new-style lanes, and modern apartments, making it a concentrated area of modern residential architecture in Shanghai. Many buildings here record precious history. The well-known story of Mei Lanfang ‘growing a beard to express his will’ occurred here.
At 533 Middle Fuxing Road, Kong Xiangxi, a top student who graduated from Yale University in the United States at the age of 27 with a master’s degree
A Tale of Love and Trees
That year, when Soong May-ling expressed her fondness for plane trees, Chiang Kai-shek demonstrated his unwavering sincerity by sending people to Yunnan to purchase 20,000 trees. These were then planted across Nanjing, each tree symbolizing his devotion. This heartfelt gesture led to the planting of French plane trees in Shanghai and other locations. The story is deeply touching, revealing a side of Old Jiang that is hard to imagine, leading to the saying: love a person, give a city; love a tree, plant it throughout Nanjing City.
