Pudong skyline at night
I used my recent business trip to Shanghai, China to also indulge in some cultural activities. First, I participated in a new program of “Shanghai Flaneur”, a walking think-tank founded by one of my friends, Katja Hellkoetter.
The topic of this newly designed walk was “Shanghai’s historical ballrooms and it’s ballroom culture”. Katja had invited me to join and get an idea what her Shanghai Flaneur initiative was all about.
But before I take you any further, let us start with a re-union dinner on the river-terrace of The Seagull on the Bund Hotel – 海鸥饭店. From here, one has a wonderful view of the river, the Pudong skyline and the Bund. The hotel is in a perfect spot, at the confluence of the Suzhou and the Hungpu river.
View of the Bund from the Seagull Hotel
Re-union dinners are never perfect as far as the quality of the photo extraction is concerned. In fact I show you only three of the many dishes the two of us consumed. The first is a composition of doufu with leach and pine nuts, the second is shredded mushrooms with dried pork strips, and the third a puff-rice filled with various colourful vegetables and shrimps. These dishes did not only look good, they were super-delicious.
The doufu with pine nuts
Dried pork and mushrooms
The “veggie rolls”
Needless to say, we drank beer with the meal.
The Tsingtao beer
Unfortunately, it started to rain and we had to look for shelter. This did not bode well for the walk later that evening which was about to start in the Astor Hotel nearby.
I will not give you an account of the walk proper, just of its beginning and the end. The walk was conducted by Andrew Field, a university teacher of Chinese history.
From the Astor Hotel we walked along the Bund (fortunately, some of the participants had brought umbrellas otherwise I would have been drenched). And we ended the very interesting and entertaining culture-walk about two hours later at The House of Blues and Jazz.
The House of Blues and Jazz is a great place. that very night the Greg Lattrell Band from Boston, USA played blues and soul music, what a treat.
The Greg Lattrell Band
I just loved the music, especially the blues pieces they played, and stayed until the very end. This was a perfect day, re-union dinner with Katja at the banks of the Huangpu river, the walk with the Shanghai Flaneur along the Bund, and the blues music of Greg and his band.
Come and see, feel and experience Shanghai, the Paris of the Far East.
The Man from Mosel River 
It’s wonderful that you are getting ideas from this article as well as from our argument made at this time.