Jinqiao is the neighborhood where we live, a suburb of Shanghai. Pronounced GIn-chow it is a much sought after location, a des-res part of Shanghai. Partly this is because it is an enclave of foreign nationals. There are at least two American schools (mine in one), Dulwich, The British school and Chinese schools which offer an English program. The streets are lined with gated compounds of luxury villas and high quality apartment blocks.

Jinqiao is in Pudong which literally means ‘east bank of the Huang-Pu River’. Puxi being the west side. Pudong is really quite new as until about 30 years ago the area was mostly fields and farmland.

To cater for the foreigners’ western tastes there is a Carrefour supermarket, an American owned grocery store stocking imported items and multiple restaurants catering to the western diet such as Papa Johns Pizzas, Mexican, Italian and even a good old Irish Bar!

There is the ubiquitous Starbucks and Costa but the coffee there is really quite expensive at £3.50 a cup! All in all it has the feel of a western ghetto. You could live here quite happily on burgers & fries and a never experience the ‘real’ China.

The roads and pavements are tree lined and well maintained

You can see here the red section for bikes and the ridges section for walkers. After the typhoon when the streets were littered with fallen branches and debris the sweepers worked extra hard and it was all cleared by the next morning! And they do sweeping by hand.

I particularly like this junction (intersection) below as they have recently installed flashing colored bricks which help to tell you when to cross. This is super useful.

As you can see the crossings are quite wide. They are all pretty much this size. So it’s a fair step to walk to either the school, church, shops or metro station. The good thing about that is my increased step count (I am topping 10k steps nearly every day!)

Some of you may have read about Chinese government restrictions on churches but it appears not to be the case here in jinqiao. We can see spires all around.

This one is the Catholic Church.

We go to the all encompassing Protestant one which is in another gated complex. There are several large halls which are used by various congregations. We attend the 11am one but interestingly it is only for non Chinese nationals

I love walking through these streets though snd in the morning on my way to school everyday I see this

Its a meeting- Asian style! So different to ours.

As the ground here is flat bicycles are endemic. Some are the public bikes which you can pick up and leave wherever (you pay per ride with the QR code and your phone) and some are private. This is just a glimpse of the street outside our nearest metro station

The access to our apartment building isn’t great though I have to say. Not exactly disabled friendly…

But all in all we are settling in to our new surroundings and learning what’s where. It’s lovely when you turn s corner and come across something that you just wouldn’t find at home…

Next job is to explore the rest of the city… Shanghai here we come!