I walked past Shanghai Stadium again last night, and noticed that the gates were open as always, with dozens of young guys playing basketball in the setting dusk. I walked inside and followed an older couple and their daughter as they walked past the games of 4-on-4, and around the side of the coliseum. Soon I realized that "stadium" that I see everyday when I pass through on my way to work is not the actual stadium, but only the basketball gym; the real soccer "stadium" is behind it. The stadium is huge. So huge, in fact, that the bottom level of the outside of the stadium has been parcelled up into neat chunks and turned into hot pot restaurants, grocery stores, KFCs, sports equipment stores... The front side of the stadium is taken up by the Regal Shanghai East Asia Hotel. I wonder if you can watch sporting events from your room?

Around the back of the stadium is the Shanghai tour bus center, with tour buses leaving to Shanghai locations, and tourist destinations in the sourrounding regions. I've been planning to take one of the one or two-day tours to Nanjing, Hanzhou, etc, just to get those out of the way.