China - Aug. 10

August 10th:

I woke up around five times during the night; I didn't mind quite so much because I was on a train. I was still a little tired when I woke up in the morning, before the stewardess knocked on and opened our door a few minutes before 7 am. My neck was only slightly stiff, because of the two small pillows that were a little awkward to use. But I also didn't mind this much, because I opened the curtains and watched the Chinese countryside fly by. Here I saw rice paddies, and poor houses quite near to apartment towers and cityscapes. It took a few minutes to finally arrive at the Shanghai train station.

Unloading the train and getting organized into buses took quite a while. Everyone was pretty tired, no matter if they had partied or not. Natalie had woken with a cold.


Once we finally got going, we stopped at a restaurant for breakfast; the same round-table style as always. Along with the usual items (which was pretty odd for breakfast) there was a small pastry type thing, which was good. Chuck started insisting on stabbing all of his food with his chopsticks in order to pick it up, because it worked once. :) oh, Chuck.

As we were finishing, our guides began distributing our room key cards for our new hotel. We had the same roommates that we had in Beijing, and this time I was careful to remember my friend's room numbers.

Our new guide's name was May. She was much younger than Echo, and her English was not quite as clear, but she was equally as nice. Unfortunately, one of the trip coordinators had come on our bus, and she felt like she needed to interpret practically everything May said. I felt that she was trying to feel important, and it seemed quite rude.

May told us that today was Sunday (I had lost all notion of what day was what, since all the days felt alike) and that a bus was available to take people to a church. I went back and forth on if I wanted to go or not, because I would have liked to join with Chinese believers, but on the other hand, I didn't want to be a tourist at a church, and I was quite fatigued as well. After I unpacked my bags in my room, I promptly fell asleep for a quarter hour, as soon as my head hit the pillow.


I liked the feel of this hotel better than the one in Beijing. It's hard to describe why, but it must have partly been because we were there only as tourists, and partly because it was not quite so big. The bathrooms were clean and had washcloths, although they were smaller.

We had a tour to take at 1:30, so when I woke up, I gave Natalie a call to see about some lunch. When I went out of my room to go see her, I ran into Dan and his girlfriend Jen, the clarinet. The four of us then headed out to find some lunch together. For a while, we followed a group of trumpets at a distance, and saw that their destination was McDonald's. Clarinet Jen was the first to see it: an advertisement for an Italian restaurant on the fifth floor of the mall we were just outside of. We wandered in and eventually found it, much to our great pleasure! They served pizza, pasta and other dinner dishes, but we all settled on simple spaghetti. And no wonder! For a dish of spaghetti with meat sauce was only 9 yuan! The equivalent of $1.40 USD! The four of us had pasta and a drink for a grand total of 60 yuan, which is just under ten American dollars. We were beside ourselves with happiness, and vowed to return there again at a later date.

We got back to the hotel in plenty of time to catch the bus to the Yu Gardens, and the surrounding old city. It was a maze of small shops, crowded with people, and a pond with statues, a long walking bridge and many fishes. For a moment, I was afraid that this was all there was to see, but there was more. May led us into a gated, garden area, that was very quiet, peaceful and enjoyable to walk through. The old buildings were decorated like many we've seen so far... with sculptures ornamenting roofs and beautiful designs painted on the woodwork. The many stone pathways leading to different ponds were seemed skillfully constructed.

It started to downpour when we neared the end of our tour, so we took shelter in one of the nearby buildings. We were all very unprepared for the weather, and got quite soaked. After all the humidity and hotness we had experienced, the cool rain felt quite nice. It was still warm out, though. When the rain subsided a little, we left and started shopping for an hour or so at all the small, fun shops, where bargaining is very much encouraged. I bought a small wooden fish carving and Natalie got a big, preserved beetle for her sister (they have a fun family). After getting ice creme at DQ, we wandered around among the shops, ignoring all the people selling umbrellas on the street, and mostly marvelled at all the beautiful jade sculptures we saw.


The next destination of the day was the Shanghai riverfront walk, which is called the Bund. At first we were disappointed that we had so much time (several hours) to just walk around and take pictures. It was a large, paved riverside walk, about a mile long, with a perfect view of the downtown Shanghai skyscrapers across the river. As Natalie and I were walking, we were interrupted by a young Chinese couple that wanted to meet us (and not sell us anything - which was slightly shocking and very pleasing) and find out where we were from. They were art students from Beijing, who were associated with a traveling art exhibition.

We then bumped into other Husky Band people who told us that our time at the waterfront also included the time at the open tea house. So we turned around and headed back. We first had to use the toilet, which cost a yuan (6 cents)! (that would be a sorry thing, if a person didn't have money with them) The tea house had an exhibition of porcelain and jade on display, as well as for sale. It was very fun to look at all of the beautiful pieces. After trying free samples of three different teas, I ended up buying a can of Ginseng tea. It was excellent!


On the way back to the bus, I asked Natalie about her family, and it turns out she's a middle kid, like me. She only has one older sister and a younger brother. Her dad moved the family here, to Washington, from Minnesota around ten years ago, to work at Microsoft. What's really odd, is my good friends from several years ago (who got me into Husky Band) had also moved from Minnesota because of their dad's job in late 1997. There must be something about Minnesota that attracts me...

We loaded the buses and went to dinner somewhere further down on the riverfront. It was the same style as always, but I thought it was one of the better ones. It was dark outside, by the time we finished, and clear, so we took clear pictures of moon. We had been scheduled to go directly onto a riverboat for a nighttime cruise, but for some reason, it was delayed. So they took us on an impromptu bus tour around People's Square and Nanjing Road, where we would be visiting tomorrow. There were a few high-schoolers on our bus who insisted on acting half their age. They had bought laser pointers (which are illegal in China) and were pointing them at buildings and on walls and in front of people walking on sidewalks, in order to confuse them. Natalie spoke to Brad about it when we finally got on the boat. (I recall they had their laser pointers confiscated at the airport when we were leaving China :)


We were all fatigued by the time the cruise started; it had been a very long day. It was fun to see downtown Shanghai lit up at night however, and I stayed on deck for most of the time. After a while, I went below to the bow and sat quietly for a moment.

The trip back to the hotel was uneventful, and I went to sleep quickly.

Jp