A blog about my Summer of 2012 studying in China :)
The same day we went to Qibao Laojie we made a complete change and went from the ancient Shanghai to the Shanghai’s most modern area around the Pearl Tower; really different, another kind of beautiful! We went up to the world’s highest observatory center at Shanghai’s World Financial Center. We went right before the sunset around 5 so it was perfect because we got to see the view at daylight, sunset and night!
After a whole week of rain, on Friday we were finally greeted by the sun, maybe a little too much sun. They don’t lie when they say the summer here can get really bad. You can be outside, doing nothing, but be sweating as if you had been running for an hour. We took advantage of having a break from the rain to go to Qibao Ancient Town, also known as Water Town because it’s crossed by two water lanes. The town is 1000 years old and the name ‘Qibao’ means seven treasures. The town is named Qibao because, according to legend, seven treasures were housed in the town. History, however, states that only four treasures, the Gold Lotus Scripture written by an imperial concubine of the 10th century, the Big Bell, the Magic Tree dating back 1,000 years and the Golden Cock ever actually existed- and only two- the Scripture and the Bell-survive today.
And of course there were lots of snacks! Food is really important for Chinese XD. One of they way Chinese people usually ask ‘How are you?’ is by asking ‘Ni chi le ma?’ which literally translates to ‘Have you eaten?’
Sunday was Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Festival), so some of the Shanghai volunteers took us out to Yuyuan Garden to see if they had any activities. Duanwu Festival is major holiday and the one with the longest history. The legend says the festival commemorates the death of poet Qu Yuan who committed suicide by drowning himself on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The local people, who admired him, dropped sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river to feed the fish and prevent them from eating Qu Yuan’s body. This is one of the reasons it’s a tradition to eat zongzi on this holiday. It is also said the local people paddled out on boats to retrieve his body hence the origin of dragon boat racing. We didn’t see the dragon boat racing but we did get to eat some zongzi. It was very good but I miss my Popo’s (grandma’s) zongzi back in Panama.
Yu Garden also known as the Garden of Happiness or Peace is about 2 hectares big. I really liked this garden, it’s probably one of the nicest I’ve visited so far. It was like a little maze with small houses, bridges, lakes and nature in between. Everything had so many unique details. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a house there? It was so peaceful, it was like stepping into another world right in the middle of the Shanghai’s hectic streets.
In the afternoon we went to Honeymoon, a Hong Kong desserts restaurant in Wu Jiang Lu. They had many odd things but they all looked really good!! What I like about Chinese desserts is that they’re not overly sweet. Honeymoon is definitely a place, we will be visiting again.
So far I’m loving Shanghai. It’s a very different life from Tianjin. Tianjin was a lot more quiet and slow while Shanghai is a lot more hectic. There’s people everywhere walking and so many things to do; it has a very New York feeling to it. What I’ll really be missing from Tianjin are the prices! I think in Shanghai everything’s about double the price since it’s a very touristic area. In Tianjin a meal could be just about 1 USD. I know 3-5 USD is still very cheap but when you see it in yuans it makes a difference seeing 12Y compared to 24Y and for 4.5 weeks we were spoiled with very veryy low prices.
China has the longest high speed rail network in the world. We took the high speed train to travel from Tianjin to Shanghai. The train went at an average speed of 210 km/h although it can reach a speed of up to 430 km/h. The journey took only 5 hours, had we taken a regular train it would have been over 16 hours of traveling!
