Sites of Shanghai!

The bridge we crossed to get from the airport into Shanghai

Ok, my latest adventure to China started off by taking a 13 hour flight from Kuwait into Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China! Bill, Joe and I had explored the desert months earlier and had talked about how cool it would be to travel to China and see some of the sites - 3 months later we landed in China with another teacher, Tom. He actually has a position next year teaching at a school in Shanghai and wanted to go and check out everything, so we decided to join him!

We stayed in Shanghai for the first 3 days and filled them with lots of walking and taking in what this booming city had to offer. Our first stop was the Yu Gardens Bazaar!

This is a more modern area, but was constructed using the old traditional style of architecture. While we were walking around, this sweet 77 year old man, Mr. Kong, walked up to us and started chatting.

Joe, Mr. Kong, Bill, Me and Tom

It turns out he was an English teacher for the past 30 years and had recently retired and spends his days walking around this area of town. He said he would love to show us around and was very adamant about doing it for free - he said he was just grateful to speak some English and have something to do! So he showed us all around the Bazaar and took us to a cool tea ceremony...

Us drinking our special types of tea!

...the silk museum....these are the machines that take the threads from the silkworm cocoons and unravel and wind them onto spools......I had no idea how this worked before! Super cool! :)

And this is an actual cocoon that will later be hooked up to the silk winder to be unravelled! Definitely bigger than I expected!

I was ecstatic to find a Starbucks tucked away down one of the streets! :)

We also took a stroll down the famous Bund, the heart of colonial Shanghai......but due to Expo 2010 opening up in Shanghai May 1st, it was all ripped up for reconstruction and renovations. We were disappointed, but I guess that's what happens when a world event comes to town!

Here's a dorky pic of me with the Expo mascot.....LOL!

This is one of the lions in front of the Shanghai Pudong Developmental Bank along the Bund. They say it's good luck if you rub the paws or head of this lion!

We spent one day at the Shanghai Museum, which was very cool!

They had LOADS of ancient artifacts on display and lots of old coins that had been dug up in more recent years. The statues outside the museum were really neat, as was the structural architecture inside.

The streets of Shanghai were very busy with lots of traffic, but what surprised me the most was that in a modern bustling city, there were just as many bicycles and carts being pulled by men as there were cars, taxis and buses!

While we were in Shanghai, we also had a chance to attend the Chinese Acrobatic Show. It was pretty amazing what some of these people could do with regards to bending and balancing! My favorite part was when there were 5 motorcycles driving inside this fairly small metal caged ball!

Because we traveled from Shanghai to Xi'an to Beijing to Shanghai, we had another day to site see in Shanghai at the end of our trip before we flew out at 11:30pm that night. We took a nice stroll in the People's Square park! Back in the day during the 1930s, it was a famous horse racetrack.......it has now been redone into a beautiful park. This is a pic of the infamous Park Hotel. Apparently during WW2 the Nazi's frequented this hotel and partied hard there!

The park itself is beautiful and is quite literally a breath of fresh air in the middle of the city!

On our way to the airport on our final day, we decided to take the Maglev - the Magnetic Levitation Train! It can run up to 430km/hour.......the fastest it got up to during our trip to the airport was 301 km/hour. It took 7 minutes to go the 30km distance! I tried to take a pic, but the vibrations messed up the focus function on my camera! This was the best I could get!

Ok, I think that's it for details on our Shanghai shenanigans! Shanghai is indeed a very new and modern city in comparison to the other cities of China. I'll post pics and info from Xi'an in a couple of days! :)