China Part 1 - Shanghai

Like Japan, this is going to be the mother of all blogs. I’ll break it up into manageable parts, but if you haven’t got caught up yet with the older ones, now might be a good time to because there is going to be a lot more in the coming days.


We are currently in Hong Kong, I’ll explain what I did here later, but I’m going to start from the beginning, which in this case was China. Some of this might be a repeat of my start to China, but that’s ok!

We got to Shanghai really early in the morning, apparently the harbor pilot boarded at 1 am. We pulled in and were all docked by 6:45 am which is when I woke up. Realizing I had missed sunrise, I booked it up to the deck to take some pictures anyways, and got some pretty nice ones. When we pulled into Tokyo there were at least 50 people up there on deck, but this time it was only myself and the global studies professor. There is a huge tower in Shanghai, called the Pearl Tower I think, that is really tall and really cool looking. I put a couple of pictures up of it with the last batch I posted, so take a look. Anyway, that tower was what was right outside of our window and across the harbor from us when we woke up, so it was a really neat sight to see. They didn’t get immigration started until almost 10 am, which was frustrating, but it moved pretty fast once it started. We went up to the faculty lounge, had our temperature scanned, passports looked at, and some forms to fill out but after that we were done and free to go.

I didn’t really have any plans for Shanghai so I hung out with my friend Simone for the morning and made plans to meet up with some other people in the afternoon. We set off to see what there was to do, and decided to head into the direction of the Bund. The Bund is a shopping district that is pretty old and historic. The architecture looks similar to the British parliament building actually. We got to the general area of it, and having no interest in shopping that early we just walked around trying to figure out how to make it across the harbor to the giant tower I mentioned. We stopped for a second so Simone could borrow my phone, and the first of many staring sessions began. In America we might catch ourselves staring at an obvious group of foreigners, and in China they are no different. As we are standing there up against a building, throngs of people walk by and they literally stare at us all the way. Many bust out cameras and start taking pictures of us, and one person even picked up his daughter, puts him in between us, and takes a picture. It was really hilarious, and I was happy to smile for as many pictures as they wanted to take. Not too far from where we were stopped was the “Bund Sightseeing Tunnel” which according to a map was going to take us under the harbor and out the other side. We went down and bought a ticket for the tunnel, an arctic exhibit and a sea exhibit not really knowing what we were getting into. Here we also got our first experience with the salespeople in China. Walking through some souvenir places, we made the mistake of stopping and actually looking at the things they were selling. They take this as a sign of wanting to buy, so they immediately start telling you that they have a good price for you. When you walk away, they grab you and start to lower the price. On the whole it is really funny, I couldn’t keep a straight face, but they are really persistent. I ended up buying a necklace which has my name written in Chinese. It goes along with the one I got in Hawaii and I’m going to keep getting as many as I can. No luck in Japan though.

So we get on this “Sightseeing Tunnel” and it turns out to be a little gondola tram thing on a track that goes through a laser light show tunnel. It was really pretty awesome for the five dollars it cost us to go through. It even had a story to go along with it that they translated into English that made no sense, but it made the whole thing that much better. We got to the other side and saw the two other exhibits we paid to see and they were a bit of a disappointment. In the “Rare Ocean Creatures” exhibit we did see some baby sharks and sea turtles which were cool, however they consider things like guppies and gold fish rare creatures apparently, so we also saw those. The arctic exhibit was a giant joke, with a bunch of plastic models of creatures and all signs written in Chinese, but we laughed it off and went on our way. When we got out of the tunnel we found a restaurant and had our first experience with eating in China. I got dumplings and a huge plate of pork and rice for less than five dollars and it was pretty good. The service was terrific too. We left from there and went to the big tower where we were going to meet some other friends at about 4:00. Well we told them to meet us at the “Front Door” not really knowing how much of a zoo it was going to be. There were probably a million people literally in that one small area, and needless to say there was no clear front door and we never found the others. After that we went to a mall close by, also filled with hundreds of thousands of people, and then started to make our way back to the ship to try and find the people who we didn’t manage to catch up with. On the way back we found a market where I actually bought some stuff. I got a pair of fake Oakley sunglasses for 75 yuan I believe, which is 11 dollars in the US. I probably could have done better, but I was still learning how to bargain. It was funny, because when they saw us coming, they got into prime selling mode and booked it to their stalls. A guy selling gloves had me suckered in from the start, and despite my attempts to just leave, he would physically restrain me and eventually I just bought gloves from him. They were fake North Face Gloves that I paid $15 for, but regardless of being real or fake they are really warm so I couldn’t care less. Finally I ended up getting a jacket for about $40 US, and in hindsight I severely overpaid for it, but I think it will turn out alright as long as it doesn’t fall apart on me.

We made it back to the ship at about 7:00 and two of my roommates, Jay and Eric, were just getting back too. I found out they overpaid for all kinds of things too, so I didn’t feel so bad. They each bought fake North Face coats which looked pretty good, and Eric bought a big stone dragon for his Grandma. As with all of the other stuff he has bought, he says he is putting it on the shelf over my bed in case it is bad luck. That just means my side of the room looks more festive though! Eric and Jay were going to go out that night with some girls that Eric had been hanging out with, so I decided to join them along with my friend Carson who we also found at the ship. We ended up having a lot of fun just hanging out that night and getting to know everyone, I’m really glad I went.