I’m back with part 2 of my holiday photos and this time it’s in the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Suzhou. This was easily my favorite part of the whole trip, it was my first time in China and honestly a really enjoyable experience.

From a non photography standpoint the city is REALLY safe, you have police officers all over the city at all times so you can’t really do anything bad. Transportation is really cheap through both their railway and rideshare, I believe including coming from the airport we spent less than $20 AUD in 5 days on their metros which is insane.

I don’t speak Chinese so I thought it would be a barrier (luckily my wife does) although I found the people in China to be very friendly and helpful, even if they couldn’t speak English they’d try to help you as best as they could. My attempt at speaking Chinese was also labeled as “cute” by the girls in Suzhou which is a compliment I will proudly keep saying! Alipay was also amazing, I honestly wish Australia would do the same and go purely digital as it was just so easy and convenient to use.

The only downside for me personally was probably the food. Despite being half Chinese, I don’t really like the cuisine. 3 out of 5 meals I had there was burgers from Five Guys which were excellent if I’m being honest. I was a bit sick though from the flight and long commute so I didn’t have much of an appetite for the first few days but luckily that was sorted by the time I got to Japan.

From a photography perspective China was also amazing. One of the main reasons I picked Shanghai as the destination to visit was due to the bund, it was a bucket list sort of place that I had always wanted to photograph and it didn’t disappoint. I will say though, it was insanely cold there despite only being December at the time of my visit. We clearly didn’t dress warm enough so I struggled to stay warm while there. It was also cool to see lines of photographers at the bund, like 20+ people there in a group to capture sunset.

I did find the North Bund to be quieter and have a better view and I’m not sure if it was due to the weather or being Christmas but it wasn’t as crowded as I had initially imagined. Aside from the Bund, everywhere we went had so many great photo opportunities from Wukong Mansion to Yu Garden and many more.

Initially I thought 5 days in the one location may be too much but there’s so many other places I didn’t get to see so realistically a full week if not more in Shanghai alone would be perfect.

Below is a gallery of all the images I took on my trip to Shanghai.

The other location we also went to was Suzhou which was only a 30 minute train ride from Shanghai. My wife had wanted to visit here for the canals and more traditional aspects in certain areas.

I really enjoyed Suzhou as well, based on the areas I visited I thought it was a smaller town but still quite busy as my wife took me to Pingjiang Road and Shangtang Street so I personally had assumed this was the ‘main city area’ but oh boy was I wrong. Once we got back I did some more research and turns out Suzhou not only has a population that’s double Sydney, but it has a massive and very modern city area that I missed out on seeing and capturing…

It wasn’t a complete waste though as I did enjoy the areas I visited and it makes me want to go back again to see the parts I missed out on. I got to see a few friendly cats as well which always adds to the excitement. Much like Shanghai I found all the people to be very friendly and willing to help if you needed it.

Below are images from the Suzhou part of the trip.

That’s pretty much it for my China photos, I still had quite a few more I maybe could have edited but I figured I’d try limit it to the ones I really like and it’s already over 90 images for this post which I think is enough.

Next up is my Osaka photos which may not take as long to edit (I hope) so give me a few weeks and I’ll be sharing them with all 4 people that view this site.

Thanks again for reading!