South Yangtze China Tour Finale – Shanghai Maglev Train

Finally, I’m going to wrap up the story of my South Yangtze China in this post. We woke up in the morning and it was already our 8th and final day in China. After having our breakfast in our hotel, KuaiJie by Holiday Inn, we checked out the hotel and headed to our final destination in Shanghai. I couldn’t resist and took a few photos of the scenes around since it was my last chance to do so.

If you were following these stories since the beginning of the tour, this is the only group shot of all 5 of us, posing in front of the hotel. 🙂

Well, we left our hotel and arrived at this place shortly. I haven’t mentioned where we went to, have I?

They claimed it as the branch of Beijing’s TongRenTang （同仁堂）traditional chinese pharmaceutical centre. I claimed it as the final travel hoax of our China tour! I’m not sure whether this is the authorised branch of TongRenTang, maybe you can tell me from this photo I took at the main entrance. According to our group member who went to the original centre in Beijing, packaging of medicine seemed different which I have no idea. I called it a hoax because it didn’t look like a conventional medicine store but more like a spa-like wellness centre. I called it so because when we went into the building, we were brought by a sales rep into a small hall. Without informing or explaining, a group of young therapists came in with a pile of warm water and offered us a  foot reflexology session! Some of us declined the offer and we sat aside waiting while the rest were enjoying their session. Then a lady in uniform that looked like a physician came in to explain about the history of TongRenTang to us.

While those friends whose feet soaked in the warm water were enjoying the reflexology session, again, few physician came into the hall and approached them to offer pulse diagnosis on their health. This was the catch! Your feet were held by the therapist and physician were holding your hand. Where could you run? 🙁 After making a diagnosis, the physician will suggest a course of treatment from their full range of chinese medicine or herbs. Coincidentally, out of those 10 members who did the pulse diagnosis, all 10 of them were diagnosed with some kind illness and had bought some medicine from TongRenTang! Believe it or not? No doubt, their diagnosis skill and results were very convincing. But can you afford not to buy anything after the physician told you to treat your illness as soon as possible? At the end of it, our group bought over thousands bucks of Chinese traditional medicine! “We… are the champion, my friend…” 🙂

Same with other travel hoax of the package, we had lunch in the same building. At around 12:30pm we left Shanghai. Oops! Not quite. We headed to LongYang Road station in Pudong district of Shanghai to take a train to the airport. Passing by the Nanpu Bridge again, I took these photos from inside of our coach.

The scene was actually filtered by the coach window with sunscreen. The result was not really satisfactorily. What I did was to try to savage them with PS Element6 again. Some stains on the coach window glass panel could still be noticed though…

We took the fastest train on earth, the Shanghai Maglev Train, SMT! It cost RMB50 per person. Off course, it’s included in our all-in travel package.

I was quite excited to go up this escalator to the platform… 🙂 How fast could it be? 200km/h? 300km/h? What’s the maximum speed of a F1 Ferrari race car? 360km/h? We will see…

Nothing special of the platform other than a huge tunnel roof.

There was it! The SMT train, or the Shanghai Magnetic Levitation Demonstration Operation Line.

The distance from Longyang station to Pudong airport station is 30km and this SMT could reach there in 7min and 20sec!! Can you believe that?

The cabin is spacious and seat are comfortable. Noise level are tremendously low and without much vibration either. Objects and scenes outside were moving backward really really quick as soon as the train took off.

Look at the speed! It reached the maximum speed of 430Km/h in just 3 minutes!! And it wasn’t wobbling and I was still steady enough to take this shot! 🙂

This is the departure hall of Pudong International Airport of Shanghai. So I shall conclude our travel to South Yangtze China here. Bye bye Shanghai and China! I shall see you again later this year!

UPDATE: Click the above slideshow to view all travel photos of Shanghai tour.

UPDATE: Click HERE to view the original high resolution version of the above photos

Hope you have enjoyed reading this and all my other stories of the tour in Travel Feeder. If you haven’t, please do so by reading this first. Thanks. – Travel Feeder.

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.