Shanghai

Our outbound flight to Shanghai departed from Seattle on Wednesday, June 3rd, so Mom gave Chad and I a ride to Seattle on the night of the 2nd. We had only just arrived home from the bear hunt at noon on Monday, and there were a huge number of things to take care of, from salting the bear hides, to Michigan pre-orientation work, to housing leases, to sending a follow-up email to Eldon about the bear hunt. All of this before packing! That said, we did not get out of Palouse until around 7:00 p.m., arriving in Seattle at 1:00 a.m. for a quick rest before catching the 7:00 a.m. shuttle to the airport. There, we got on a short flight to Vancouver, waited far too long in a customs line to enter Canada, then got on a flight to Shanghai. A movie-filled and largely uneventful 11.5 hours later, we arrived in Shanghai at ~4:00 p.m. on June 4, 2015.

The Chinese customs were very easy and very efficient... they even had SLAs! 98% of passengers wait 20 minutes or less to enter the country. We got through, found an ATM, then took our first try at the Shanghai train system. The first step was to take the Maglev train, a high-speed (300 kph) train into the city. That was pretty cool and a preview of the high-speed train we would be taking to Beijing. From there, we transferred onto the Metro, which was incredibly easy to navigate. All of the signs and ticket machines were in both English and Mandarin, as were the announcements on the train. Everything was well-signed, and we easily transferred from line to line. We arrived at the Four Points that I had booked on points, and unloaded our backpacks in the room. I had used a suite upgrade, so we were staying in style. We stopped in the Executive Lounge for a very typical Starwood happy hour, then walked around the surrounding area. Both of us were very tired, not having slept as much as we should have on the plane, but our goal was to stay up til 9:00 p.m. to start getting over the jet lag. We were in the Pudong area, just a few miles inland from the main downtown of Shanghai with the iconic skyscrapers. We made a big loop around the streets, passing a lot of normal people taking very normal evening strolls. We arrived back at the hotel and managed to stay up until 8:30 or so.

The next dawned early, like 7:00 a.m. early. We went to the complementary buffet breakfast, which had a mix of American and Chinese food. We were both fairly hungry, not having had dinner the night before, and tried a bunch of new things. I found out that I don't like Chinese porridge. After breakfast, we took the metro to the Urban Planning Exhibition and learned about the plans to expand

the city and the progress that has been made in the past couple of decades. Shanghai is the world's largest city, with over 25 million people. The center had a model of the city that took up an entire exposition hall, maybe 60 to 80 feet long on each side. It was unbelievably large. There were 30-40 floor apt buildings stretching in all directions from the downtown, from the ocean on one side to the inland border of the model. There were also several different downtown centers with clusters of skyscrapers.

From the Urban Planning Center, we walked down Nanjing Road, which is full of high-profile shops. Nike has a huge presence there, and they jack up their prices. A pair of running shoes was about $200. Can you imagine their profit margins! We also ventured off the main drag into allies where we saw much more authentic shops and foods being cooked. We ended up eating lunch in a food court on Nanjing. A very nice hostess knew a bit of English and helped us order noodles and a rice bowl. From there we walked toward the river and along the Bund, which is a row of traditional bank buildings along the river. This had been very hyped up, and I thought it was definitely overrated. We walked inland along the river until we came to the Yu Yuan Old Street, leading to the Yu Yuan shopping center. This was probably my favorite part about Shanghai. We started out in a flea market like you would see in Mexico, except that it was 6 stories tall. Each little stall was selling something very specific.

Jewelry or underwear or lightbulbs or chopsticks. We walked along and bought a few souvenirs, then went through the Yu Yuan Classical Street and into the Yu Yuan shopping center. This was street upon street of little shops, full of Chinese tourists buying this or that. We walked around and eventually went up into a tea room, where we tried three or four different teas and then bought some souvenirs. That was a good experience that I would recommend. After this, we headed back to the hotel and up to the Executive Lounge again for happy hour, where we couldn't even see the downtown for the smog. It was pretty bad.

After happy hour, we went out in search of food. I was not hungry- the portions in China are just insane. We would sit there, struggling to finish our lunch, while two tiny Chinese girls sitting next to us would clean house in half the time. Those people can EAT. We ended up picking a hole-in-the-wall place that had almost no English. We tried

a new strategy of sharing an entrée and still couldn't finish everything. From there, we walked to a couple of western bars we had seen the night before, wondering if we could find someone to chat with. They turned out to be the worst kinds of Irish pub knock-offs, with only a couple of business travelers. Two drinks later, we went home disappointed with the bar scene but excited to go to sleep. We managed to stay up until 10:30 or so that night.

The next day was June 6th, our second full day in Shanghai. After breakfast, we headed back to the Yu Yuan area that we visited the day before. We had tickets to see Yu Gardens, an ancient set of gardens, ponds, and buildings north of the river. Here we saw more non-Asian tourists than we had seen the rest of the time, mostly traveling in large tour groups with guides. We worked our way slowly through the buildings, pathways, and mass of tourists. There were many small buildings all set up the same way. They consisted of one large room on the bottom floor with a small table, maybe 4 ft. high in the middle of the room. Standing exactly perpendicular to the table 3-4 feet away were a few chairs. Then far away, against the far side walls were more chairs, again perpendicular. It seemed like the least useful furniture layout imaginable. You couldn't reach the table from any of the chairs, and you would just have to sit stiffly and look straight ahead of you, instead of being circled up to have a common conversation.

Apparently each room belonged to a family, and there were many families living together in the Yu Gardens. Between the buildings was a stone structure that they called a "rockery". It was a 60 meter long, 40 meter high structure built out of rocks that had been bound to each other. It had ponds, staircases, tunnels, and pathways connecting the buildings. Most of the ponds had koi in them, and there were a few flowers here and there. An hour later we came out at the grand stage, which is gilded in gold and was used by the ultra-wealthy.

After we exited the gardens, we went back into the Yu Yuan shopping area in search of dim sum. There were way more tourists today, but we eventually found a place and ordered. It was pretty disappointing. I thought the stuff you can buy in the freezer section at home was better than their dumplings. We made a goal of dumpling redemption before the trip was over and walked to the Bund

Sightseeing Tunnel, which goes under the river from the Bund to the Downtown area. It was just a little trolley going through a tunnel with an LED light show. It wasn't worth what we paid, but it had A\C! The downtown area was pretty cool. We came out by the Oriental Pearl, which is a strange tower with two large spheres in the middle of the building. It was pretty cool close up. From there we walked through a giant mall toward the tallest building downtown. Unfortunately, it was recently constructed and not yet open for tourists. The "bottle opener" building was nearby, but we decided it was too expensive to go to the top. We ended by walking to the Aquarium and spent an air-conditioned hour or two fighting the crowds to look at fish. We did see some cool sharks and sting rays. From there, we went back to the hotel to happy hour. As it was Saturday, we had looked up a better place to go out. We went to a new part of town and found Shanghai Brewery. Looking at the menus, it was a little more western than we had intended, but the Chinese can certainly make a

hamburger! We had burgers, fries, and beers. We then went on a walk around, looking for an authentic bar, gave up, and returned to Jenny's Blue Bar, across from where we had eaten. It wasn’t bad for a little bar full of ex-pats, and they had a pet cat, which Chad appreciated. We left around 10, as the subways close at 11, and made it to bed around 11:30.

June 7th was our last full day in Shanghai. Having seen everything we wanted to in the city, we wanted to go see an "ancient town" away from the city center. The coolest one didn't have a metro station, so we had to find and use a bus to get out there. It took us about 1.5 hours and the help of 5 or 6 strangers, but we eventually found the bus we needed to board. We never would have made it, but the concierge had written a note on a piece of paper that we showed to people. We're pretty sure it was just asking to direct us to the bus station. Everyone we asked was so nice in directing us... one guy even

drew us a map! After an hour bus ride, we arrived in Zhujiajiao, an "ancient town". The town was positioned on a system of canals, and there were some good-looking bridges crossing the canals. Once we got into the small streets, they were lined on either sides with places to eat, tea houses, and little shops. It was very quaint, and we had a good time walking up and down the small streets. We had lunch at a place on the river with no English, and watched as the traditional boats went by. It reminded me of Venice, except take out Fabio and insert a small Chinese man with a pointy straw hat. It had started to rain and we were thinking about leaving, when we came upon a major walkway by the river. Apart from a Starbucks, there was also a wine bar, artisan pizza place, and cupcake shop. We were back in southern California! We found a nice patio seat under an umbrella and drank a couple of cocktails while it rained. Chad also ordered fries, and after that I made him promise no more fries in China, as this was the second time in 24 hours. After a couple hours, we made

our way back to the approximate location of the bus stop and looked confused until people led us there and put us on the bus. It was a long ride home, standing near the front. We had hit rush hour and our driver was crazy. He drove on the shoulder to pass everyone on the right for no less than 5 miles. At long last we arrived home and were exhausted. We went to happy hour, then spent a few hours on our phones, planning next steps and relaxing. We went to bed around 10:00 p.m., ready to leave for Beijing the next morning.

The next day, we got our last free breakfast and packed up our room. There was quite a journey to the train station, and we found out the hard way that we could only pay in cash for our nearly $100 tickets to Beijing. At long last, we got Taiwanese fast food and set off on the 6 hour bullet train to Beijing. The scenery changed very slowly. At first, it was apartment building after apartment building. This carried on

for nearly an hour at 300 kph, if you can believe that. Even as we entered the more rural areas, there were frequent apartment forests with new or still under-construction communities of the same apartment building repeated 20-30 times. As these gradually cleared out, the landscape wasn't as dead flat and small hills covered in greenery started to appear. There were tiny plots of rice and irrigation ponds on these hills. After a while, the crops diversified to include grains. Chad and I thought it must be wheat of some kind. They seemed to have very good stands, and were almost weed-free, except for the occasional wild oat. It was harvest time (on June 8th!) and they had tiny little combines with a swath of maybe 15 feet. They were also harvesting the straw, and while some was bailed, there were still plenty of people with pitchforks loading hay into wagons. Dotted along this agricultural region were little cities where the train would stop. At 6:00 p.m., we pulled into the Beijing station.