2010-03-09 31 121

Location

An unspecified compound near Fudan University, in Shanghai, China

Participants

Faydra and her smooth-talking mother

Expedition

My mother and I leave home at around 11:00 AM. We get on a taxi and head over to the nearest metro stop, at Beixinjing on Line 2. We transfer to Line 3 at Zhongshan Park and get off at Jiangwan Town. It's not an area either of us have ever been to, much less are familiar with, but it's near Fudan University, which is one of the best universities in Shanghai, so it's something we've both been meaning to do.

View from inside the taxi
Metro Map
Underground...
Changing Lines
Destination: Jiangwan
Jiangwan Town

Mom's excited because there's a Mexican fast food restaurant she's wanted to try out in the area, so we go there first, taking a moped rickshaw? It is located at Handan Road, which pretty much runs along the southern end of the northern half of the Fudan campus. The food's alright. Not very authentic, and I'd probably be very disappointed with it in America, but for the prices and location, it's not terrible. Afterward, we decide to explore the campus, which is very pretty, and then we start our search for the geohash location, which is near the northern student apartment area. This is where the trouble begins.

Moped Rickshaw? Faydra's mom inside
I wasn't going to keep the laptop out...
Fudan University
North Fudan Student Apartments
The actual apartments

There were some discrepancies between the maps:

Street View

This is the location. It looks like it's on a pedestrian road, right? Well, I switched it to satellite view and it changed drastically. To this:

Aerial View

I managed to link up the northern student apartments on both maps, and we start from there. It turns out there's a wall between the college campus and the geohash location. So we walk through the student apartment complex looking for areas to reach the other side. All of them are blocked/walled off, so we exit the northern end of the complex and walk around from Wudong Road to Wuchuan Road. If you zoom in on the aerial view, there's a kind of empty lot area between the student apartments and the geohash location. We hit that, initially, to get a better look and to see whether or not the point would be accessible from there. It wasn't, but the guy who let us into the lot was very helpful and curious about the whole ordeal, which I found kind of hilarious and awesome. He told us he thought it was a government area of some sort, so we did lose a bit of hope then, because...well...Chinese government. But we forged on until we hit the next alleyway, which led us to the small black roof south of the empty lot. That complex was very narrow, and had to do with street sanitation or something. We weren't sure whether we'd be able to get to the geohash location from there, so again, very helpful people let us inside, and we determined that the roofs on the Other side of the wall was where the biggest line of red roofs was.

Empty lot, mistake 1
Helpful guy who let us into the lot
Effective ways to keep people out
Sign to alleyway, mistake 2
The wrong red roofs

Anyhow, we left that complex with the idea to hit the Next alleyway. Which turned out to lead us into some train tracks. I insisted we follow them. So we did. Then we hit a locked gate. My mom explained the whole situation, and they unlocked it for us, so we ended up walking into this area by Train Track. No joke. That was where I saw the bunch of trees, and the correct red roof. I got really excited, and we took a picture. As we were leaving, we asked the authority what kind of complex it was. Apparently, it's some Chinese government-run related enterprise. So...yeah. I'm a bit worried about posting up too many photos online, because I know we weren't supposed to be in there. I'll definitely put some up, but I'm definitely keeping People out of it, because Big Brother is everywhere, and I don't want anyone else to get in potential trouble.