Shanghai!

We arrived in Shanghai, China around 8:00 a.m. on February 3rd! I got up early to eat breakfast and watch the ship pull in, just as I've done with every port we've been to so far. To get to where we were going to dock, the captain had to navigate the ship through the Huangpu River, which took us directly through the city. It was amazing to watch!

The city is incredible! Right above my head you can see the Oriental Pearl Tower, which is 468 meters high!


I was just a little excited. :)

 
After getting off the ship, my group made our way down to Yuyuan Garden. It was built over 400 years ago during the Ming Dynasty and is now one of the key relic sites in southern China. Surrounding the garden, there are many shops and highly recommended dining places. A friend who has been to Shanghai before said it was a must see, so that is where we decided to go! We decided to take the 45 minute walk instead of the Metro so we would get to see the city along the way.

We were warned during the "pre-port meeting" the night before arriving that China would be very different from Japan, especially in how the people would interact with us. We got a taste of that the moment we stepped off the ship. As soon as we started walking, a man snuck up behind us and starting squirting shoe polish on Kaitlyn's boot. He didn't ask or attempt to say anything before he did it. He just walked right on up and starting squirting away. We were all pretty surprised and quickly walked into a nearby Family Mart.

We walked along the river most of the way to Yuyuan. It was so beautiful, and it was interesting to see the contrast between the old buildings on one side of the river and the large sky scrapers on the other. As we were walking, people would stop to stare at us and many would take pictures. It almost felt like paparazzi. Some people tried to be sneaky about it and pretend they were taking a picture of something else, but then they would quickly point their camera to us as we walked by. It was pretty entertaining! Others weren't quiet about it at all and would stand directly in front of us to get a good picture. I don't think any of them were trying to be rude. They were just fascinated! Sometimes it was fun to surprise them by smiling and waving when they took pictures. :) They got pretty excited when we did that.

Many of the restrooms in China don't have toilet paper or soap, so we made sure to bring some tissue and hand sanitizer along. Traditional toilets in China aren't really toilets at all. They are basically just holes in the ground. Sometimes we were able to find a restroom that had one western style toilet, but that didn't happen to often. It was definitely a new experience!

The entrance to Yuyuan Garden was surrounded by tons and tons of shops! The ones on the street had many decorations out in preparation of the Chinese New Year, which is coming up quickly. It was a lot of fun to explore and look at. Here is an example of what it looked like! I ended up buying a little new years dragon. :)

Since we stuck out as obvious tourists, we were targeted by many of the shop owners and, unfortunately, people running scams. We were luckily warned ahead of time of some of the most common scams. I actually ended up running into every single one that was mentioned. For example, we had people come up to us and ask if we wanted to go see their tea house or take a tour of their art museum. As we had been instructed, we said no and walked away. I'm glad I knew ahead of time what to do in those situations! The night after we left Shanghai, SAS sent us this picture that was taken at a hostel in China. I hope you can read it!

I was very excited to find a music store that had almost all of the traditional Chinese instruments that I have been learning about in my Music Cultures course! When we walked in, the shop owner was playing an Erhu, which is a type of 2-string barbarian fiddle. He was really happy to see us and loved that we wanted to take pictures and videos. After playing the Erhu, we pointed to the flutes to see if he would play one of them for us. He was more than happy to and even posed for a picture before playing.

This is a "Dizi." It is a side-blown flute that has a little membrane stretched across the air hole to give it a slight buzzing sound when played.

After doing some shopping, we found our way to the garden entrance. There was so much else around it that we decided not to go in quite yet! In the center of the little district, there were bridges over water that you could walk across. In the water, there were figures that told a story. It's really hard to describe, but I took a video of the whole thing. Here is a picture so you can get an idea. It was gorgeous!

We ended up going backwards through it the first time on accident, which made people stare at us even more. But we went back through the correct way after that so we could actually understand the story.

We had a late lunch at an amazing restaurant in the center of the district. We decided to treat ourselves to something nice instead of buying street food. For some reason, they sat us at a huge round table even though we only had 5 people. It was one of the only tables with the spinning circle in the center to pass food around, so maybe they wanted us to be able to experience that. I had our very nice waiter take a picture of us all! Even though he didn't speak any English, it was pretty easy to non-verbally communicate. We ordered a lot of different things and shared them, including several different types of dumplings, a chicken and cashew dish and fried rice. The dumplings were my favorite, especially the ones with crab meat. It think that might be the best thing I've had so far on this trip.

After lunch, we looked at a few more shops and the amazing pieces of art and decorations that were everywhere! It really is impossible to explain them in words. Here is another example.

We then paid the small entrance fee into the garden. It didn't really look too much like an actual garden since we were there on the off-season, but it was amazing to see all of the old structures and buildings. Most of them had signs in English beside them so we could read about what they had been used for way back in the ancient dynasties.

We had to walk back through all of the shops to get out of the garden area, so we looked at a few places we skipped on the way in. Then we started heading back to the ship because Kaitlyn, Melia, and I had to be back to catch the field program bus for the Era Acrobatic show that evening. I had really been looking forward to that and was not one bit disappointed! It was incredible! I even had 3rd row seats! I wish I would have been able to take pictures, but they didn't allow it. If you've ever seen a Cirque Du Soleil show, it's similar to that! I don't understand how the human body can move and bend in the ways they did. I loved it, and it's been of my favorite parts of the trip so far. Here's a picture of the outside of the stadium.

Kaitlyn and I went up to the 7th deck after returning to the ship and took pictures of the Shanghai skyline. It is absolutely gorgeous and easily most incredible city I've ever seen at night. All of the buildings were lit up with different colored lights. I took a panorama that is my favorite picture so far from the trip. I wish I could upload it but it's too big of a file. Here's a picture that will at least give you an idea. :)

On the second day, I spent time with a girl named Kearisten who is looking for Christians and  Christian churches in each port we visit. I was honored that she invited me to come along with her! She wanted to go to the Yuyuan Garden area, so even though I had been there the day before I was more than happy to go along with her. To sum up our experiences, we actually ended up finding a Christian church but we were not able to go inside during the time we were there. We also met several Christians that spoke English! They told us about several churches we could find in Shanghai, but they were too far away for us to be able to make it back to the ship in time. So we spent the rest of our time eating some amazing food around Yuyuan garden, buying gifts for friends and family back home, meeting new people, and taking some incredible pictures. This is my favorite picture from the day. :)

We had to be back at 4 p.m. that day if we were traveling on the ship from Shanghai to Hong Kong. We had the option of traveling overland, but I didn't sign up for any of the trips so I decided to get back on the ship! I think it was actually a really good decision. There have been no classes during these two "in-transit" days, so I've spent my time catching up on sleep, working out, getting some studying and homework done, journaling and emailing people back home. I've really enjoyed it. Out of the approximately 1000 people on the ship, only 160 got back on in Shanghai. It's been very quiet, but quite relaxing! We had a movie night last night, which was so much fun. They showed Disney's Tarzan followed by Thelma and Louise. A lot of the faculty with young children got back on the ship, so I think that's why they chose a Disney movie. I decided to relive my childhood and watch it. I had forgotten how good of a movie it is!

We arrive in Hong Kong early tomorrow morning. Hong Kong is full of shopping malls, and the ocean terminal right outside of our port actually has like a 12 story shopping mall inside of it! The group I'm going with is definitely planning on doing a little bit of shopping to pick up a few things we decided we need for the rest of the trip. One of the guys in the group, Mike,  did SAS last Spring. He's been to Hong Kong before and is going to take us to some of the "must see" places during the afternoon. Then Melia and I are going to a Cantonese Opera in the evening. On the second day, I have a field lab with my Health Promotion and Behavior class that I am really looking forward to!

After Hong Kong, we'll start to have a much longer time in most of the ports. We get to Vietnam three days after we leave Hong Kong and we spend six days there! For Semester at Sea field programs, I am signed up for a three-day homestay and an orphanage visit. I also am hoping to get a dress tailored while we are there, but we'll be there during the Tet (new years) celebrations so it's possible that most of the shops will be closed. We will see what happens!

Thank you all for following my blog. I really hope you've been enjoying reading it so far. I apologize if there are ever any typos. I type them quickly and try to edit them before I send, but I probably have been missing some things!

Also, I love comments! Please feel free to comment if you'd like to! I'd love to hear from anyone that is reading this.

Thanks! :)