It was a bad idea to go across the river to Pudong on National Holiday but I had thought it would be nice to walk along the river on such a sunny day. That was my error – thinking that it would be a pleasant stroll instead of trying to move through a scrum of Chinese day trippers crowded onto the elevated pavement by the Super Brand Mall and along the roads leading to the river.
We had to move as one body of people rather than individually. I could only move forward when everyone else wanted to move forward. The metro system was particularly hazardous especially getting off the escalators because of the huge crowds of people at the bottom.
Police and security personnel were there to try to control the crowds but still it was claustrophobic and I was pleased to eventually get to the river. Here were ice-cream stalls, photographers, buskers and thousands of others with the same idea as me.
As I stood and looked across the river I could just make out the crowds on The Bund and I could see that there was at least one place in Shanghai which was more crowded than along the north bank of the Huangpu.