Part of what we focused on as a study tour objective was to understand the idea of "China in contrast" and you cannot find a place with more contrasting elements than Shanghai.
Shanghai is the largest city in the People's Republic (although depending on where you are you may be told differently) and the 8th largest city in the world. The sky-rises are out of this world and they are currently constructing what will be the world's tallest building (this year). Shanghai is also one of the world's busiest ports.
This more or less sums up my feelings on Shanghai:
"Some challenges remain for Shanghai at the beginning of the 21st century, as the city struggles to cope with increased worker migration, a huge wealth gap, and environmental degradation. Despite these challenges, Shanghai's skyscrapers and modern lifestyle are often seen as representing China's recent economic development."
So Shanghai represents China's recent economic development, which to me makes perfect sense. Before arriving in Shanghai I had some sort of mental image which was centered around the financial business and foreign trade. The fact that it also has these issues such as wealth gap and environmental degradation also very perfectly sum up China as a whole. I suppose having the two extremes juxtaposed within the distance of two city blocks, at times, was what made the city seem especially bizarre.
In some of my pictures you can see skyscrapers looming behind a street in which the clothes are hanging from strings. That to me is China in contrast.
A view across the Bund
On our first day we went to the Jade Buddha temple which was located nearly in the city center. Another strange encounter with tourism, historical relics and places of worship. We happened to show up on the birthday of one of the gods (one which also happened to change genders, the transvestite Buddha) and we were lucky enough to see special blessings and rituals taking place. You can see in the next picture people burning assorted things. It is customary to offer up things like paper money to those in the afterlife. We saw lots of paper dollars floating around (I suggested that maybe they should be sending Euros).
They were moving money around the temple and these guards were keeping busy.
Beautiful ceremonial candles
Free time around the streets of Shanghai was quite an endeavor. Our tour leader sent us in the right direction of the pedestrian street and having walked a block or two I decided to detour off to some of the side streets and get away from the tourist haven. It was a really great decision and it was very neat to see what a difference just walking two blocks in any direction really means. I went from being hounded to look at fake bags, to walking along the streets with the locals coming home from work or heading to get groceries. I was suddenly the only tourist I saw around. My mission was to find a pair of shoes that my Grandfather had asked me to try and buy for him. The problem being that instructions like, "Get off the main road a few blocks but if you get to the bank it's too far" turned out to not be specific enough ... I did have the type of shoe to look for and became very familiar with the shoe shops of Shanghai.
A busy commute! Every city was full of bicycles. They have an amazing way of balancing two people on the bicycles as well. There were lots of motorized bicycles as well.
Walking around alone I decided to grab something quick to eat. Dumplings! This was the little kitchen open to the street that I found and they were so sweet to even wave and smile when I asked if it would be OK to take a picture (by ask I mean use of hand signals were involved).
This picture I took on our way out of the city. I thought it was really amazing to see these gigantic electric towers and consider how much energy is necessary for a city of 17 MILLION!
On our way to the textile factory which was appx. two hours outside of Shanghai and we decide to stop to get lunch. More dumplings! We definitely caused a scene as you can maybe make out from this picture ... the crowd is mostly locals trying to figure out these crazy Westerners buying 60 dumplings. The unbelievable part was that we had 18 people to feed for lunch and it came to a grand total of 34 yuan (less than 5USD) and the woman wouldn't take anything more.
Busy at work. We noticed along the trip how the population affects daily work. Typically where you would expect one or two people to be working you would find 4 or 5. The labor is cheap and lots of people need work. This example of the men on the side of the highway as we buzz by on our bus just made me think of the way in which modernity has still not changed the real lives of more than half of China's population, those who live in rural areas.
Eeeh, more power lines.
Building, building, building ... the entire drive to and from the textile factory was flanked with new development and construction. I cannot think of another place in the world in which you could be two hours away from a city and the development continues to spread.
Street near our hotel at night. A pretty poor picture but maybe you get the idea, lots of flashiness and you can just barely make out the row of bicycles at the bottom.
Taxis and traffic
Cocktail hour at the world's tallest hotel!
This is a shot from inside the atrium at the Grand Hyatt in Shanghai.
Pretty cool!! Not cheap!!
The end of this night was definitely one for storytelling ... we ended up all together back at the hotel in a private room for karaoke, funded by the North American director of DIS (Brad! The greatest!) singing to music which refused to be English and with whatever words we cared to sing (Mandarin vocab coming in handy).
Some of the group -- Alex, Paris, Selby & Brad
This was the closest the mic got to me -
The pearl TV tower, where we had a great lunch which we spent trying to determine in which direcetion was the restaurant was revolving in.
From the view at the TV tower ... the Grand Hyatt hotel right next to the world's tallest building
Did you know The Chinese flag was first flown in Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949 - the day of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The red color of the flag symbolizes revolution. The large star symbolizes the Communist Party and the smaller stars represent the people of China (the workers, the peasants, the petty bourgeois, and capitalists sympathetic to the Party (or "patriotic capitalists").
Which of the four stars dreamt up the world's tallest building?
The magnet train! Fastest train in the world! This was a really cool experience, which lasted a whole 8 minutes : ) OK, so it seems as if this 1.2 billion dollar investment might need to be expanded past the 30km that it currently traverses between the subway station and the airport, but China is pretty preoccupied right now. Still, very cool 301km per hour.
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