China 5: Shanghai

In this final episode, we visit the flashy city of Shanghai.

Our high speed train pulled in from Changzhou on Thursday, October 12, 2017, and we walked a couple of blocks further than necessary, due to a helpful person's incorrect directions. Here is the view from a sidewalk that goes over the top of all four sides of an intersection.

There were lights hung in the trees that made it look like Christmas! The little purple birds had animated flapping wings.

The buildings had animated colored lights on them. In this view outside my window, the purple lights slowly turned a variety of colors. (In Beijing, some of the animations scampered from one building over to the next few buildings in a row).

The little buffet there had dragon fruit again (tastes like kiwi).

That evening we took a subway to go check out the cool city lights.

We wondered which of these Merlin was to be sitting in the courtesy seat.

The subway dropped us off in an area that reminded me of Times Square. It was all lit up with electronic ads, and lined with fancy, expensive shops.

Eventually we reached The Bund, a section of town that was built up by Western countries (Brittain, Netherlands, etc.) and thus has Romanesque, Gothic and other classical architecture.

The Bund

The Bund

Across the river from The Bund is the Pudong District with its beautiful, modern skyscrapers. It was an amazing site.

Pudong District

From that vantage point we saw pleasure cruise boats floating by, and sights like this skyscraper with animated lights across its entire face.

There were a gazillion people at the waterfront enjoying the same view. Here you can see some of the people with The Bund behind them.

Then we walked back through town. I bought an ice cream cone there, and it was perhaps the first ice cream cone that I ever threw away. It had a disgusting chemical taste. What a tragedy.

The walk was beautiful at night.

Speaking of ice cream, Steve Nickle said that New Zealand has the best ice cream in the world. So then it was funny that there was a New Zealand Ice Cream stand at our hotel.

Our hotel had one of these. If you'll notice, the strip doesn't have two sides--just one. Woah. In mathematics, they call this a Möbius strip. Except that this is the curviest one I've seen.

Friday morning while Steve went to some meetings, I went with Eric and Merlin to help Eric find a Chinese flute.

As we walked towards the section of town with the music stores, I was blown away by the architecture of the buildings in Shanghai.

When I visited London, there was a pickle-shaped skyscraper called "The Gherkin" that everyone raved about. It was indeed an interesting building. But there were dozens of skyscrapers in Shanghai that were each as interesting as that one, it seemed to me.



This next series of pictures I call, "Buildings in China Have Hats".

Some of the intersections have pedestrian overpasses that span some or all of the streets below.

Kids get hauled around on bikes, scooters, and various other means of transportation. Including luggage.

In Shanghai we mostly saw big city stuff, but there were some side streets that seemed to give a glimpse of more traditional life.

Eventually we found the street that people had told us about that was lined with music stores on both sides. Some were western-style piano stores with pianos and guitars and such. But some carried traditional Chinese instruments like the plucked guzheng (on the wall on the left), various kinds of flutes, and some bowed instruments.

I learned how to play the Erhu, which is a 2-stringed Chinese fiddle. The bow has horse hair like a violin bow, and the bow is permanently stuck between the two strings. You hold the bow like this, so that it keeps the hair away from the wood of the bow, so that you can either push or pull in order to play one string or the other.

The resonator box at the bottom is lined with python skin. When I tried it out, a customer in the shop made a comment, and Eric said that the guy had said that I must have played the violin, because I was apparently doing it right. (I mean, I didn't sound good or anything...). I played "Arirang" and the guy recognized it as a Korean song.

I don't have a video of this instrument in China, but I do have one I took of a Chinese man playing the Erhu on a bridge in the Boston Public Gardens in May of this year.

We tried playing a hulusi, which has a reed, a gourd, and three bamboo pipes. An older gentleman there showed us how it was done, both on a cute little one and a larger "real" one.

I thought it was cute how he sort of bowed at the end.

Eric bought a flute and I bought a sort of recorder with a rice paper reed over one hole to give it a little buzz, sort of like a kazoo does. I stink at playing it.

After that we saw some more street scenes.

I forget if I mentioned that there are yellow bikes all over China that have cellular communication built into the locking mechanism. You use an app to locate one, pay a small fee to rent the bike, ride it wherever you want, and then lock it up again. If I had known how to do it, I would have loved to ride these things around town.

Eric checked out one more book shop.

Having had our fill of Chinese food recently, we decided to try "Mr. Pizza".

They had some pretty funky flavors of pizza, like "meat and potatoes", cheese steak, etc. We opted for the Korean Pulkogi pizza, which turned out to really just be a mild sausage pizza.

The McDonald's there had a truly frightening double burger with two hot dogs on it. It seemed like a culinary abomination.

I thought it was cool how much cardboard this guy could stack onto his tricycle. (He saw me taking his picture, so I smiled and he bowed and gave me a smile.)

After lunch we met up with Steve at the hotel, and we went down to an area near the Yu Garden, where buildings have been built in the traditional style.

Some of the establishments aren't quite so traditional, however.

We did a little shopping while in the area.

And who wouldn't want a "hunk of Chairman Mao's favorite pork fat" or a "dumpling soup" keychain?



There were some pretty ponds there.

It was a fun spot to visit.

As an aside, when Coca-cola was first introduced into China, it didn't have an official Chinese name, so people transliterated it using whatever characters sounded like "coca-cola." The problem is that some of the characters meant things like "Bite the wax tadpole," which didn't go over well.

Then someone chose characters that sounded just slightly different than "coca-cola," but was well worth the change. Now the characters mean, "Permission for you mouth. Permission for joy." That was extremely well received.

(No idea about McDonald's).

With that, we wended our way back towards the hotel.

As usual, I had wanted to see everything possible, but at this point, we were all pretty worn out and had seen plenty, so it was time to wind down. I didn't even take any more pictures that evening!



On Saturday, October 14, we took a couple of taxis to the airport. I thought this picture was an interesting juxtaposition of traditional and modern Chinese architecture. (These are a couple of the buildings that were across the river from The Bund. Not quite as fancy in the daytime.)

Packing was a bit tricky, because our hosts gave us gifts, like a huge tree-shaped set of picture frames, smashed peanut stuff, dried bean curd, and this box of spicy radishes. (I may have regifted that last one to the cleaning staff).

I had a nice flight home catching only an hour or so of sleep, but enjoying my book and some movies.

Once at home, there was a bunch of stuff going on around stake conference, and foster care was in full swing, so it ended up being 30 hours since I woke up before I could go to bed. (This probably contributed to getting a cough that took me down for about a week after I got home).

Here is a picture of the peanut stuff that we helped smash with the big wooden hammers in Beijing. It was actually pretty good.

And, as promised, I did indeed resupply our chopstick supply.

And I brought fans for the girls and our hosts sent a scarf for Linette.

What a great trip! We accomplished what we intended to for work, got to see lots of amazing architecture (including the Great Wall, which was my favorite part),  tried some really interesting and tasty food, and met some delightful people who were wonderful hosts. It was an eye-opening experience.

Zài jiàn!