Shanghai, China

People everywhere, endless Rolex Watch sellers and washing/laundry hanging from any and every possible line, pole or even branches of nearby trees - those will certainly be some of the memories of our 2-day visit to Shanghai. On every street corner someone is to trying to sell you a "genuine" (?) Rolex watch. One of the faculty bought 6 watches for $15.00 yesterday. According to our guide they're known as 7-day watches!
We enjoyed a city orientation tour - visited the Yu Gardens which is fully restored classical Chinese garden with lotus ponds, winding paths, canals, arched stone bridges and cobbled lanes. A very interesting, albeit touristy, visit. We then went to the Old Bazaar which is a maze of
curio and souvenier shops plus loads of open-air restaurants. After lunch we took a walk along the historic Shanghai Bund which is a seven mile long boulevard and gives one a fabulous view of all the enormous buildings overlooking the Huangpu river. It was interesting to see the various shapes and decorations on top of all the skycrapers - they ranged from flowers opening, to balls, spikes, and crenellations and are brightly lit up at night.

We then visited the Jade Buddha Temple which is an active temple with 70 resident working monks. We watched, and listened to 4 sets of monks worshipping/chanting. The temple was built between 1911 and 1918 in the style of the Song Dynasty, with symmetrical halls and courtyards,
upturned eaves, and bright yellow walls. Inside the centerpiece is a 1.9-meter-high white jade Buddha. The seated Buddha, encrusted with jewels, is said to weigh about one thousand kilograms.(We both sighed when we heard that we had yet another visit to a temple, but this one was really spectacular). We then did a tour of the Shanghai Museum where there are 120000 precious works of art including bronzes,ceramics, jades, and a wonderful display of Ming and Qing-dynasty furniture. It's divided up into ten sections and you could certainly spend all day looking at everything displayed.

In the evening we went to the Shanghai Center Theater and watched an amazing acrobat show. It was incredible. We have seen acrobatic shows before but this was the best. The show has been performed all over the world - it's a combination of traditional Chinese acrobatics with
modern performance techniques and great dancing.

What we didn't witness were the millions of Chinese in the sweat shops and struggling to survive in the rural areas. However, there was a lot of evidence of amazing growth and development and our brief trip to Shanghai was very interesting and enjoyable. There was certainly a drop in temperatures after steamy Saigon but it was great to be able to walk around comfortably. We are now en route to Kobe (Japan). Before we arrive in each country we have very interesting talks from inter-port lecturers. The 2 Japanese lecturers this morning wore wonderful colored kimonos and gave us very useful info and tips on the very different culture we will find in Japan.




Anyone for lunch ?

Pictured at a sidewalk restaurant