This weekend I made vague plans to go to the old Jewish area in Hongkou- the north part of Shanghai, I ate a bagel for my breakfast listened to a little Amy Winehouse and was ready to go.

I’ll save us all some time however; I didn’t find it and wandered around HongKou instead.

Hongkou area, north of Suzhou creek
Just over the Suzhou creek

In the taxi on the way to get where we were going, I saw the factory for Seagull cameras- a brand I’ve been wanting to check out for a while now (what? I’m a camera geek OK?). Telling the taxi to stop, I crossed the bridge back over Suzhou creek to get to the factory but for some reason they close it at the weekends, when everyone is off work. Maybe the cameras are so good they want to keep them all to themselves.

The area just above and below the creek is kind of run-down and scruffy but the old buildings obviously have a history and character to them that you don’t find in too many places in Shanghai. The view to the Pearl Tower is amazing too, and without the crowds that you get on the Bund.

View of Pearl Tower from Suzhou Creek
would probably be even more impressive from on top of that lock/dam thing I reckon

Giving up on the cameras, me and Emma headed North in the direction of a temple we’d read about on Shanghaiist. Even though we had the address, things are a lot harder to find in the tiny streets of HongKou and we ended up getting pretty lost, only finding the place after it was dark and the gates were locked.

It didn’t matter though, we saw a new side of the city, everyone in this less-touristy part of town was friendly and pored over maps to help us find where we were going, and we found stuff we wouldn’t have otherwise seen- like 1933 the old abattoir that’s being converted into bars and galleries.

1933 slaughterhouse
1933- a slaughterhouse being converted to an ‘art space’