Shanghai Oh My!! - Tuesday, 2/24 - lots of walking of course!!!

So I must start out by thanking my friends Jodie, Sara and Olivia for giving me a journal for Hanukkah.  It is because I had this journal that I was able to retain anything that I did while in the country of China because except for this 1st day in Shanghai I was without my computer.  I decided that blogging has truly kept me accountable to documenting my travels and it definitely helps knowing that people are actually reading it!!!!

I also realized that writing in a journal allowed me to express the emotion and feeling side of some of my experiences that I have held back on in this blog, so I may continue to write in this journal so I can recount my memories as well as how I felt about some of the experiences I have had.

Anyway let's start with Shanghai.  We started this morning with a diplomatic briefing at 8:15am and I thought we would start the debarkation process soon after but it was taking a lot longer than we anticipated.  The reason that we came up with was because of some relationship problems at the present time between Obama and the Chinese government (he is visiting the Dalai Lama and the Chinese are not very happy).  We were also told to not talk to anyone in China about politics for fear of an altercation happening.  We are in a communist country after all.  So by the time I got off of the ship around 1pm we left with a large group and just started walking and walking and walking.  We walked over this bridge from the ship and to the Bund.  The Bund, a river walk, was supposed to give us excellent views of the river and the city.  Unfortunately for us the Bund was under construction for the Expo that would be there in the summer so we did not see the view we were looking for.  This was not starting out to be one of the better walks we had taken on this voyage.  At some point we realized that we were not walking alone, we were walking with lots of people, some locals and other tourists from other parts of China visiting Shanghai for the Chinese New Year's.  Yes, we were in China for the Chinese New Year...How cool is that!!!!  So anyway we kept walking and half of the group decided to leave and we were down to about a group of 6 and after a little bit longer we were down to a group of 3.  I think that traveling in groups is great and necessary but unless you are on some sort of guided tour any group over 5 or 6 people starts to get unmanageable and you start to get many different wants and needs.  Here are some views of the city:

When we finally got down to Cindy, Laura and I we arrived to the old part of Shanghai and what I envisioned China to look like not like the city we had walked through to get here.  We encountered our first of many street food and store front bargaining vendors.  We walked around here for a couple of hours and of course tried some different foods.  I ate an overflowing styrofoam container of lo mein and glass noodles for 6 yuon (less than $1) from street vendor.  Also we figured that noodles were a safe street vendor food, safer than some of the other things we were seeing that is for sure! 

Street food:

 We came upon this other area that included a 2 yuon store (less then 30 cents)

and then we got to a candy shop that had a restaurant upstairs where we were able to use the bathrooms (which were western toilets - they are starting to become more scarce!).  Anyway we came down to the candy shop and I saw this man drinking Bubble Tea and he looked at me and said "Tea", I asked him if he spoke English and he did so we chatted a little bit and he helped Laura and I order bubble tea.  Far less people in China speak English then they did in Japan and there are also a lot less pictures for us to point to in restaurants!

But our new friend Phil and his wife Mrs. Chen (this is how he introduced his wife to us - she also spoke No English) were very helpful.  After they helped us order we were led out and told we needed to see the temple that was lit up near the Yuan Garden.  We followed dutifully and Phil and Mrs. Chen walked us down this street that opened up in to an area that was decorated for the New Year with lanterns and cartoon pictures of tigers (It is the year of the tiger after all) and the mascot for the 2010 Expo.  We looked at all of the decorations and it was good to be a tourist with other tourists who were mostly Chinese. 

We definitely received more stares here than in Japan and I learned later that many people experienced this as well.  One family even wanted to take a picture with us.  After walking through the entire temple- which by the way had been converted into stores and restaurants- we went to dinner. 

We had told Phil earlier that we wanted to eat dumplings and he said that was what he and his wife were doing and we would join them.  We were grateful for this because we knew he would help us order our dinner.  We went to a place that we called Grandma's Dumplings.  I ordered dumplings (of course) and I knew that I wanted soup because I was out in the cold all day (high of 40 degrees).  Phil said (or so I thought) soup with pork bun and since pork buns make me happy I said I would have that, he laughed and then I laughed.  I did not know why we were laughing until the soup arrived and there was a large meat covered pork BONE floating in my soup.  We all had a good laugh including Mrs. Chen!  I ended up offering my pork bone to Phil and he graciously accepted. 

Cindy with Grandma's Dumplings:

Us with our new friends:

So this meal was quite a hit and it was time for us to part ways from our new friends.  We said our goodbyes, wished each other a Happy New Year.  After walking for a little bit we hailed a taxi which was a task in itself we pretty much had to step in front of one in order for it to stop.  Once back to the ship it was time to pack for my big trip across the country of China!!!