Day 28 – Shanghai

On paper the day seemed so simple – go to the Yifu Theatre to buy tickets for the opera then visit the Propaganda Poster Art Museum to see lots of muscle bound peasants riding tractors hailing the glorious revolution.

Firstly let me tell you that the tourist information offices in Shanghai seem to exist solely to give Chinese people who hate tourists somewhere to sleep for the day, we have been into 3 since we arrived and the best reaction we have received from the simple question 'Do you have a map?' was when the woman shoved us towards the door and pointed at a traffic light.

So armed with our own (what we soon discovered was) hopelessly inadequate map we set off for the theatre, this proved a marathon walk and the 30 minutes it looked on the map quickly spiralled to 2 hours longer as we kept walking into car parks, shopping centres and every other large building along the street that closely resembled a theatre, and loads that looked nothing like one. Upon finally arriving at the box office we were told that if we wanted tickets for tonight we would have to come back at 7.30 tomorrow. After many confused looks, raised voices and finger pointing it turns out that their was no show that night – what with it being Friday.

Frustrated, we proceeded to the Propaganda Poster Art Museum, as searches go this one was epic – I don't think as much effort was put into the hunt for Osama Bin Laden as we put into looking for this museum. We walked for nearly 3 hours, but after being directed into dark alleys, kitchens and (once again) a car park (albeit a different one) we gave up. The whereabouts remain as elusive as why anyone would think The DaVinci Code is a good book. For a Propaganda museum it was bloody damn inconspicuous

Defeated, we did what anyone else would do and said 'Bollocks to this, let's go and get drunk'. Do you think we could find a bar? Don't get me started.

On the way back to our hotel we purchased the finest bottle of red Chinese wine money could buy (well £1.60 could buy) and several bottles of beer with no name. The wine, as I have a sneaky suspicion you may have guessed, was slightly less drinkable than a liquidised frog – at least that is what CIara said, I quite liked it.

In the evening we visited one of Shanghai's famous dumpling restaurants and contrary to all expectations, there was not a toe-nail in my rice, the waitress didn't drop a boiling pot of tea on me and we didn't get mugged.