Lounge Review: China Eastern V01 International Lounge, Shanghai Hongqiao Airport T1
It’s been a while since I’ve flown through Shanghai Hongqiao airport. And so it was quite refreshing to me how much more convenient it is for me compared to Pudong airport: just a 30 minute car ride rather than an hour, and much faster walks through immigration and security.
The three lounges in Terminal 1, a China Eastern lounge, an Air China lounge, and a lounge by the airport operator, are all in the same cluster.
The layout is quite odd. First there is a long room with cushy chairs with side tables…
…then another long area with cushy chairs with low tables in front…
Followed by a very long corridor with just a wall of windows on one side and a closed-off wall on the other, and then a dining room at the very end. At the end of which, was China Eastern’s standard “MU Noodle” bar with either dry noodles, noodles in soup, or fish balls with vermicelli boiled to order.
There was also a salad bar and some hot dishes, but they seemed like a lot of different kinds of starch like pasta and fried rice.
I got dried noodles, which were advertised as 葱油拌面 or noodles tossed in scallion oil. In the Air China lounge in Pudong which I frequent, they dress and toss the noodles for you, but here it’s self serve. Since that was the case, I dressed my noodles with scallion oil and a little soy sauce, and topped them with the fried scallions as the noodles are normally made, but I also topped the noodles with spicy ground pork, wheat gluten, and preserved vegetables and pork. It was a really savory and yummy combination!
I also got some cut fruit and a vegetable bun.
All in all, this was a pretty good lounge. I liked the big windows with views to the runway and airplanes. But at times, it was actually quite hard to find a seat, especially before a Japan Airlines flight left.
