Being tourist-y

Our first full day in Shanghai was full of sightseeing. Scotty was sick today so Tina was his replacement. Tina told us that you weren’t cool in China unless you had an English name. She picked hers because she liked Michael Jackson and Tina Turner, but was told Michael was a boy’s name so went with Tina. Scotty told us yesterday he picked his based on Scotty Pippen (yes he is short).
We first walked to the Shanghai Urban development center and saw a scaled model of the city. The population is almost 20 million, but covers about 7 times the size of NYC, so its not very dense. Like Scotty said most of the city has been built in the past 30 years, especially since 1997. There was a display that had photographs a guy took in the 80’s and then his son took photos from the same spots in 2004. I’ll include some of the pictures I tried to take of the side by side comparison. Its unbelievable the amount of construction that has taken place in such a small period of time. Tina said there are now over 2,000 buildings over 20 stories, which differs from what Scotty said, which was 3,000. Either way the city is booming.
We did a drive-by of the downtown area, that has the famous television station with the spheres, as well as the second tallest building in the world.
We saw a 450 year old garden kept up now so people will know what Shanghai used to look like, as well as a Buddhist temple. The picture of me next to the doorway is to show the large thresholds they often have. They’ve been tripping me up all week. The thresholds are meant to keep out evil spirits. Apparently evil spirits are very small and can only travel in straight lines, so thresholds and hallways that curve can cause them to get frustrated and go away.
I also took a picture of some construction going on in the city. That is bamboo scaffolding, which they use on any building under six stories.
After the garden we went to a marketplace, and bought some goods using our newly found bargaining skills. One member of the group bought something from a street vendor for 20 yuan. He gave them a 100 and was about to get the change back when our tour guide stopped them, saying the vendor tried to give him fake money. Scary!
The first picture is of our hotel, the top is supposed to be chopsticks!
Happy Sunday! I probably won’t update until Wednesday, as the next two days are probably going to be boring business meetings.
-R-