When I was visiting with my new friend at the little noodle shop outside of the grounds of the Terra Cotta Warriors, I asked her what this character displayed on the wall was:

She told me it was “biang” — or maybe “bian” or “bang,”  she wasn’t quite sure.  She only knew it was read  as “biang” in her dialect, and that was really all anyone would need to know.

When I asked her what it meant, she just said, “It’s the biang we use in biang biang mian.”  She went on to describe the local specialty, a type of noodles called biang biang mian.  They are handmade noodles, and very thick.  There’s not much to the soup the noodles are cooked it — just vinegar, soy sauce, and chili oil, I think — but it is a local favorite.

For me, I didn’t get to try the noodles, being that I was too full at the moment and left the city early the next morning.  But I did notice, after she’d told me what the character was, that I saw it all over Xi’an at the little noodle shops lining the roadside.

So there’s a local specialty I missed.  Perfect excuse to go back.

When I was preparing for my first trip to Xi’an, everyone told me to try the local specialty, Shaanxi pao mo. It is a different dish from the Lanzhou version that I like so much at little shops in Shanghai, but I liked the Shaanxi version as well.

I didn’t eat at one of the big, famous spots for pao mo.  Instead, I took the advice from a Xi’an native who I met on the plane and tried it at a little hole-in-the-wall shop, right outside the grounds of the Terra Cotta Warriors.

The dish is a thick soup with bread broken up in it.  The bread gets all soggy sopping up the stew, but the inside remains a little bit firm.  It’s a little spicy, and quite rich. Just the way I like it.

Shaanxi Pao Mo

There’s a nice relief of Surgery on Kuang Kong’s Arm. It’s an interesting piece, depicting an event that took place somewhere around the first century BC.

The only thing I find odd about this piece is the location where it is displayed.  At Mount Elizabeth Hospital.  Right outside of the operating theatre.

Not exactly a comforting sight when entering the ward, nor when you are waiting for a loved one to finish surgery.

I came across this guy in Singapore last week, and couldn’t help but post his picture here. Especially since he was nice enough to pose for me.

Travel to the end of each line in Shanghai’s Metro system has been fun and enlightening.

One thing the project has reminded me is that Shanghai is a huge city (and growing).  I actually completed the project within a month, making the first trip on March 22, and the last on April 22.  And now here it is getting into July, and I am finally wrapping up the series.  And, this time, it’s not just because I’m long-winded, but because the topic — the city — is that expansive.

This metro map (the same one you see in all the stations, minus the dates) shows the days that I made my trips.

I’ve tried, in each post about the stops I visited, to include a little window into that world.  You can find very little in words, with more pictures than written narrative in each post — something of a departure from my normal style, I guess.

I worked quite hard to find a different way to display the name of each station.  The picture of each station’s name was taken inside the station, or on the outside of its structure.  I’ve included the names from various signs posted in the stations, once using the machine where you buy tickets.  It was fun to try to find enough different ways to post the name, so that each method would be unique to that locale.  I think it does something to add to what I wanted to capture in this whole series — the diversity of this city.

At times, I began to feel the project was quite silly, and that it would never end.  But I am glad I did it, as I saw what I wanted to see — the different sides of Shanghai life.  It has definitely caused me to reflect, and for that alone, it was worth the time and effort.

It might seem a little strange to include a short post on Yishan Road in a series of posts about travel to the end of the various lines in Shanghai’s Metro system, because it is not at the end of any line.  It is right in the middle of the action, a place where three different lines in the Metro system meet.

It is not as busy an interchange as People’s Square, but it does give some feel for what I was contrasting each of the ends to.  And, it works better for giving a window onto my own daily experience of taking the train than some of the other downtown stations because it is not too far from my house, my starting point for most of my journeys to the end of the lines.

Here’s a little look at life right outside Yishan Road station, to give a feel of the contrast it provides for the other stations that have been featured over the past few months.

Travel to the end of Line 9 where it terminates in Songjiang marked the end of my travels along the Shanghai Metro system to explore the outer reaches of this big city.  It was a very fitting way to end the project.

Songjiang is one of the older parts of Shanghai, considerably older than the downtown regions, I think.  Today, it houses another of Shanghai’s many universities, the Shanghai International Studies University, which is actually located one stop before the final station on Line 9.

Across from the station where I stopped was a pretty little garden, which I took a short walk through.

The garden was actually set up to lead the way to the impressive complex that houses the city’s administrative bodies.

It was a very nice way to wrap up my travels to the end of each line on Shanghai’s Metro system.

Travel to the end of Line 7 towards the north takes you, for now, to Shanghai University.  It will eventually be extended, but this is the current terminal station.

The station is new, and the signs inside it are all pretty impressive.  Everything was clean, nice, and efficient.

Outside the station, I enjoyed the walk around Shanghai University.

The campus is quite pretty.  I enjoyed a pleasant little tour inside the grounds, though I didn’t get to wander as far in a I might have liked.

Overall, it was a very pleasant place.  And I really enjoyed seeing some of the other creatures who seemed to be enjoying the spot as much as I was…

Travel to the end of Line 1 on its northern extreme was almost as interesting as it was long.

I was surprised to find just how far inland Shanghai’s port operates, though I know it is somewhat famous for being further inland than many comparable shipyards.

Other than that, though, the area was just another place where the residential parts of Shanghai are poised to take over.

My favorite part of the station was right outside, where there were numerous stalls selling my favorite roadside delicacy…

The quality of the pancakes wasn’t too impressive, but there was certainly plenty of variety.

Travel to the end of Line 10 on the west side was still only possible along one of its branches when I went there, which was the day the line opened.

The train was not at all crowded, with not even one person joining me along the row where I sat for the whole of 28 stops.  That is very, very rare on any train in Shanghai.  The lack of crowds on the opening day of the new line surprised me.  In Singapore, it would have been unheard of on the day a new train line opened, as everyone tends to flock to the opening of anything, even the most mundane of things, in Singapore.  But then, that probably says more about Singapore than it does anything else.

Even more surprising than the sparse crowds for the bulk of my long journey was the fact that I was the only passenger on the train when we reached Hangzhong Road.  It gave me a feeling of the uncanny to look both ways as the train wound its way into the station and see absolutely no one else.  And, when I arrived, a station attendant quickly went to open the gate at the exit for me.

When I reached the road, I liked the neighborhood that was being built up.  It is just a little beyond where some of my friends used to live, and it was nice to see the residential area coming up out here where I used to see nothing but empty land.

Even though, as you can see in the photos above, the residential buildings are not quite complete in the area, there is already a nice complex for food and entertainment.  It looks like the early birds who move in here won’t have any problem finding a nice spot to eat any time they want.

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