Day trip to Sheshan

Last Friday, some friends who live in our compound suggested that we go on a day trip out to Sheshan, where there is a huge park with loads of activities for kids. It sounded fantastic – we arranged to meet the following morning and would work out logistics then.

In the interim, a rain forecast nearly put us off, but a “let’s wait and see what tomorrow looks like rather than rely on the weather bureau” meant that we were up and in the direction of ready to go on Saturday morning. Our kind neighbours did some maths and decided that we could all squash into their Buick van. Thanks to the lack of overloading laws in China we managed to fit in 6 adults, 5 children and a dog as passengers. This was not too bad as it meant that each adult held a child (usually one of their own) or a dog, heaps of space – we could have easily had another couple of dogs there, and maybe another child! Anyway, cozy it was, so lucky we’re all friends.

Sheshan is about 30km south west of Shanghai, and it is the only part of Shanghai that there actually is a significant hill. On the top of this hill is a Catholic Cathedral, called Our Lady of China where services are actually conducted in Latin. There is also a big radio telescope out here, which is part of the international Very Long Baseline Inferometry project (as is 'The Dish'). It was not either of these attractions though which was our Sheshan destination. We were headed to the Shanghai Sculpture Park, which is almost 90 hectares surrounding Yue Hu (Moon Lake) and bordered by the Sheshan Mountains, beautiful open space. Felt great to be out there, and not be able to see buildings in all directions!!

The park is divided by seasons into 4 sections, and not surprisingly we headed to the Summer section, which is basically a water park. There is a beach on the lake, with lovely sand (compared to that in our sandpit) and sculptures all along the beach, and a huge pool with fountains, bridges, islands and waterfalls, and all less than 60cm deep, so perfect for the little people. Ellie loved playing in the water and actually was in for about 3 hours, until her lips were turning blue. She was completely disinterested in lunch, and just wanted to stay in the water splashing and swimming. Mike and I took turns in being in the water with her, and drying out on the pretext of looking after Jamie. The other kids were in and out and entertained her as well. Other activities included climbing into an enormous tree house, which was really only offered as a bribe to get the kids dry, and some climbing nets, in which I felt really uncoordinated, but the kids managed to scamper across.

We then piled back into the car for the trip back home. Unfortunately additional traffic made the trip a bit longer, and with tired kids who weren’t strapped down, it was harder to keep them contained. There is a lot to be said for compulsory childseats, besides the safety aspect! When we arrived home, some other neighbours were watching open mouthed as we just kept climbing out of the van – it was like those Guinness Book of Records attempts squashing people into a Mini… we just seemed to keep on coming!

As it turned out, the day was perfect, not so hot and sunny that we were all fried after a day in the sun, and also not so hot and sunny that it drew an enormous Shanghai crowd, which also meant that our kids were not bombarded with paparazzi, so a bit of a holiday for them too!