5 Things We Have Learned This Week… #12
We ended our time in China this week, spending a few final days in Shanghai before flying to Macau – a city that surprised us with its layers of history beneath the casino lights. It was a week of reflection, contradiction, and a realisation that we might be starting to miss home.
Here are five things we have learned this week:
1. Old Shanghai Is Slipping Away
Shanghai is developing at a pace that’s hard to fathom until you see it. Despite never having been there before, we could see that this city is changing and it’s changing fast. We spent an afternoon exploring what was meant to be the oldest surviving part of the city – but most of it had already been emptied. Whole city streets were empty, the outlines of vanished alleyways marked only by rubble and the occasional sign warning of demolition.
There were glimpses of old city life still clinging on: a few families still living in the houses, a mahjong game in a shadowy doorway. But mostly, it felt like the past was being bulldozed to make way for glass towers and shopping centres. It was haunting and oddly quiet – like the city was in the middle of erasing it’s past and becoming something else.
2. The Butterfly of Shanghai
In the midst of all that change, we came across a beautiful symbol: the butterfly. In Chinese culture, it often represents transformation, fleeting beauty, and the soul – and it feels especially poignant in Shanghai. Here’s the thing with this one though, I can’t find out why the butterfly symbol is particularly prevalent in Shanghai.
Even after some research, reading about Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang), who was one of Shanghai’s most famous writers, and captured this in her stories of 1940s Shanghai: lives caught mid-transformation, suspended between tradition and modernity. Her nickname, the “Butterfly of Shanghai,” fits not only her delicate prose but also the city itself – ever-evolving, beautiful, and on the edge of vanishing.
Seeing butterfly motifs in shop windows and murals after reading her work felt symbolic. Shanghai isn’t static. It’s mid-flight – sometimes breathtaking, sometimes sad.
But still, I am left with the feeling that this my own interpretation. I don’t know, can anyone tell us differently? Why is the butterfly so important to Shanghai?
3. Macau: A Little History With Big Personality
Macau is like no other place we’ve visited – and maybe in the world. Once a Portuguese trading post, it was handed back to China in 1999, the European influence is still everywhere: baroque churches, blue-and-white tiles, even Portuguese on street signs (though barely anyone speaks it now).
But this isn’t a colonial relic. Macau pulses with Chinese culture too – from incense-filled temples to Cantonese opera posters and bustling wet markets. We wandered the UNESCO-listed historic centre, where cobbled lanes led us to the ruins of St Paul’s, a 17th-century church façade that now looks out over noodle stalls and neon-lit bakeries.
There’s a certain faded elegance here – layers of empire, commerce, and faith, all crammed into a peninsula that’s smaller than many airports. Macau wasn’t like the cities of China we had just left, yes, it’s just as chaotic and charming, but it’s entirely its own thing. Oh, and did we mention Macau uses the British plug… what a delight!
4. Macau Casinos Are Not Vegas CASINOS
When we pictured Macau’s casinos, we imagined Vegas-style chaos and I couldn’t wait to show Ash what the ‘Vegas' off the East’ was like – but what we got was… silence. The casinos here are enormous and glamorous, sure, but inside they’re surprisingly quiet.
It’s a very different gambling culture: baccarat is king, and the players are serious. No free cocktails, no Elvis impersonators, no whooping at the roulette wheel. Just focused faces, suited dealers, and the occasional flick of a chip.
It felt more like a luxury stock exchange than a party. We wandered through the Venetian and The Londoner with wide eyes but didn’t stay long. It was fascinating, but not really our scene. And while the stakes are high, the fun is low-key. They really just felt like a shopping mall but an underwhelming casino attached.
5. Britain Isn’t That Bad (Honestly!) (And We’re Starting to Miss It)
There’s nothing quite like travelling for a long stretch to make you nostalgic for things you normally complain about. When we left the UK behind a few months ago, we honestly couldn’t wait to leave it all behind, the jobs, the weather, the routine, how expensive everything is, the constant churn of London life. But after a few weeks in China experiencing the culture shocks and the completely different way of life here, we found ourselves missing Britain’s very particular brand of order.
We’d give anything for the familiarity of a proper cup of tea (for Ash anyway), the familiarity and safety of British food, and for someone politely queuing without elbowing us out of the way. China’s sheer size and pace wore us out, and we started to talk more and more about home – not in a “let’s go back” way, but in a “wow, we really took basic things and Sunday roasts for granted” kind of way.
It was the first moment we realised that we will go back to Britain at the end of this year and we need to make every single moment of this year count. China has taught us that we need to be more selective about the places we visit, how long we spend in a place and really challenge ourselves about why we want to visit a place in the first place. We’re definitely not ready to come home, in no way at all, we have so much more to learn and explore but we really could do with a decent pint (that’s 568ml not 500ml!).
Final Thoughts
That’s a wrap on China, we’ll talk more about our time here in more detail and why we probably won’t go back in a dedicated post, but it’s been a life changing experience and one we won’t soon forget. Macau was like coming up for air and next week will take us to Hong Kong to reunite with Ash’s Dad and then onto Taiwan. I’m sure we will continue to learn some fun yet challenging lessons as we enter Week 13 of Fuji To Fiji!
