2 Days in Shanghai, Shanghai, China

Shanghai is the biggest City in China with a population of 24,256,800 and is filled in part with neck-breaking, sky-scrapers that soar up high towards the clouds. If you want a vision of how fast an economy can grow in 30 years, then look no further than the Bund! What used to be woods now has the Shanghai Tower which, at 632m, is the 2nd tallest skyscraper in the world.

Highly influential for economic and financial trade, Shanghai is famous for its tall buildings, quality cuisine and is known by shopaholics as the “Oriental Paris”, but how would you choose to spend two days in this international metropolis?

For our stay in Shanghai, we were at the Lantian Hotel, a very grand place and possibly the best we had stayed in during our 18 day tour of China. We slept soundly wrapped in our silk duvet, silk duvet cover, silk pillows and silk pillow cover! My oh my, didn’t we feel pampered!

Silk is huge in Shanghai, it’s so popular, our hotel used it in all their bedrooms. We had the opportunity to visit a silk museum and shop to see the different stages of the 50-60 day life cycle of a silk worm and how the silk is extracted and made. Single cocoons are used to make clothing, scarfs and many of the finer type material whereas the double cocoons are separated and stretched by hand to make blankets and pillows. Silk is thin but very strong but by jove, it’s gorgeously soft. 8 single cocoons make 1 scarf but to make a double duvet it will take 6,000 double cocoons. 2,500g = 12 tog duvet and cost 2,500RMB (approx £280/$375 US for a king size). ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).