Shanghai'd in Shanghai

Nimen Hao!
So two and a half days in Shanghai... It's kind of like trying to visit New York, Chicago, and Miami in the same amount of time.
Day .5 - Getting settled and seeing the Bund
We landed at about 9 PM on  Saturday, our first stop was to our swanky hotel and then off to the Bund (a river very upscale river walk).  Absolutely amazing view of the Shanghai skyline, of course we got there just in time for the rain to start.  The river it self was pretty amazing, but the boats on it were even more so, some of these ships were five stories, Spend a mere 100 yuan and you can dine in style, we missed the last boats so we just watched form the shore.  We walked the length of the Bund and found a pretty awesome Indian place for dinner.

One of the major bridges in Shanghai, the lights actually cycle through the rainbow

The view on the Bund, you can just make out the Pearl Tower as the red dot on the left

One of awesome boats on the Bund, it's roughly 100 yuan, but definitely worth it

Picture from the bridge, These are all apartment complexes, 40,000 Yuan a square meter

Yeah... not sure... Art?

Part of our hotel room

Another part of our hotel room

And yet another part of our hotel room

Day 1 - The Expo, and People's Square

After finding some great street food for breakfast (pictures saved for my next blog) Matthew and I made our way to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, us and about 1 million of our closest friends (no exaggeration, it is estimated that in the first three days of Golden Week, National day holiday, 4 million people visited the Expo).  Now Li told us that almost every taxi driver would speak some English, and if they didn't we would run into ton's of English speakers, both statements turned out to be false.  We didn't run into a single English speaking Taxi driver, so we had to try and communicate our destinations through images, body language, and drawings... hilarious... So after a few mishaps, and mis-communications we arrive at Gate 6 (which meant absolutely nothing to me, but it sure seemed important to the Chinese).  We cruse through the first four layers of security, and find ourselves in the first of four "holding pens" for admission.  Thirty minutes pass, and we finally get to move to yet another line... thirty more minutes and our line is filtered into a true single file line that zigzagged up to security check five, an hour and fifteen minutes later we are finally in the Expo.  Now the Expo itself occupies slightly more than 38 soccer fields (an odd way to measure, but that's the figure I was given here).  We were not able to go into many of the pavilions, but simply walking through the sea of humanity was challenging in it's own right.  I've posted some of the many pavilions we were able to see, overall a pretty cool experience.
After a morning of Expo-ing, Matthew and I headed deeper into Shanghai to see some of the major sites.  We centered on People's Square, a major Metro hub in Shanghai (yet another sea of humanity).  We were attempting to find the Shanghai Art Museum, but despite our new map, and all of the directions we could handle... we could not find this building.  But we did get so see some interesting art in a few outdoor exhibits and we wondered the streets to see how the people of Shanghai live.  On our journey to meet up with some other people in my program, Matthew and I ran into our first group of English speaking Shanghai-ers... and boy did we learn a ton (more to come at the end of the blog for those of you interested in a rather embarrassing story about me [Which will probably be all of you]).  We met up with David, and partook in my first Chinese pub-crawl (only three Irish pubs but I got my Guinness so that helped).

Holding pen 1

The final stretch

Outside the Thematic Pavilion

Freakin' New Zealand, making everyone else look so drab

And you have to hike at the New Zealand Pavilion...

The Australian Pavilion is covered in rust... not really sure what the message is there but...

The "City-Roo" was pretty cool

Rather lame...

4 hour wait to go to Russia, pretty cool on the outside

Apparently Romania is also known as Greenopolis...

No Guinness here

The artificially green rolling hills of Ireland

"Turks on Parade", many of these guys were actually Chinese with fake mustaches

The China Pavilion had a limited 10,000 tickets a day, we didn't get one...

People's Square art

People's Square Spouse market... yup

Gated community in Shanghai

A less than gated community in Shanghai

Every Building in this city was lit up

The only product that I have been missing in China

The Thermometer tower in Shanghai, it was 18 C

Day 2: Grocery Shopping, Sightseeing, and The Worlds Tallest Bar!
Matthew and i had hoped to go to near by Suzhou on our second day, but with half of the 1.4 billion Chinese on the move, we couldn't get tickets.  So more time for Shanghai which was definitely worth it.  We met up with the rest of my group and hit the local City Store, a western oriented grocery... I was more there fulfilling requests from some colleagues Luoyang.  And then lunch at the world's most bland American restaurant... I'm actually a little worried that the food I'll be getting back in the States will not measure up to the flavors I'm getting here in China, with the exception of the great home cooked from family and friends, (you know who you are).  Cheese was the most requested item (which I found interesting since i was told the Chinese don't really like cheese).
The Remainder of the day was set aside for as much sightseeing as possible, we went to The Pearl Tower (which cost 150 Yuan, so we didn't go in), we went to Yuyuan garden (which as far as I could tell was more of a mall than a garden, there were barely any trees), and we went to the site of the first Communist Party of China Governmental meeting (which is now in a neighborhood that would easily fit in Boulder or Greenwich).  The main attraction for Matthew and I was the 100 Century Bar (conveniently located at 100 Century Street), this bar is supposedly the world's tallest (A quick note on semantics: Tallest [measured in floors] not Highest [measured in Altitude] that is all) on the 92 floor.  Not surprising, the drinks in this bar were expensive (in Chinese standards) 170 Yuan for two beers.  The view was more than worth the price.  Matthew and I navigated our way back to our neighborhood, and ate some pretty awesome street food.

The Pearl Tower during the day

The site of the first CPC meeting, now a open air market with ridiculous prices... odd irony 

Yuyuan Garden... not a garden...

 

The view from the 92 floor, the red is the red is the Pearl Tower

My next blog will be the start of a five part series "The Senses of China", until then...

Zaijian


A quick note for anyone planning on visiting Shanghai:

It is highly recommended that when you meet a group of "college students from the country" who want to practice their English be leery.  Matthew and I met just such a group, now I like to think of myself as a bit of a skeptic and a realist (some might say pessimist), but apparently I still like to assume the best in people (and to does Matthew).  So when we are asked if we would like to join a group of students, who would like to practice their English, for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony, what do you expect me to say...
The ceremony was interesting, and the tea was, well tea.  The conversation was engaging and company was pleasant.  Then the bill came, the trap was sprung, and we were none the wiser.  
We had 5 teas, it turns out that the tea was roughly 50 yuan per cup per person, we had to pay for the room, 35 yuan per person, and for some nonsensical reason we bought tea roughly 180 yuan for roughly a coup and a half ( in measurement not drinking cups)... all in all is ended up costing Matthew and I 830 yuan each.  It turns out that this is a common way to fool us foreigners... 1 word to describe me "Rube"...

Maybe you're asking yourself, "Huh... I wonder Why Ben's guard was down?"

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