Shanghai!! (Part 3)

When I woke up the next morning, I haven’t felt that rested in months. Most of the days in Xiangyang, even if I had slept my fill in the night, I’d never ever wake feeling renewed like sleep is supposed to do. I’d mainly feel like, “Ugh, another day to get up…Ugh.” But today, I woke up and felt BEAUTIFUL. The sun was shining through the window, the heat was still on and filling the room, the room smelled good, and the ground was covered with a big thick rug, unlike the bare tile I have throughout my whole apartment. It was just a great feeling to wake up that day.

So then the family made us a nice breakfast of eggs and PEPPERJACK CHEESE…it’s been a while since I’ve had access to some good cheese and so just taking a bite of that was an amazing burst of wonderful flavors in my mouth…and served with a mug of hot tea and a slice of toast with butter (toast  AND butter are BOTH  very hard to come by in Xiangyang). And then we were on our way. What a great way to start the day!

So at the recommendation of the family we stayed with we made our first stop the Yuan gardens. Now we didn’t actually know what this was. We thought it was a garden…I’m sure you can imagine why. We told the driver the Yuan garden, but he wasn’t certain what we meant. He didn’t know if we meant a real garden or some place that just had the name garden in it. We didn’t know what we meant either. We thought it was a garden, so we decided to try the first one…as we were driving there, the driver was saying to us that there probably wouldn’t be much to see at the garden; it’s winter and so there’ll be no flowers out. So we just went over there to quick look and see if it was something we should go into…I wondered why the family would recommend we see something now that’s not going to be worth seeing?

When we got there, there was absolutely no one there. There might have been one person working at one ticket window (one window out of like eight or nine altogether)…and there were no vehicles parked outside the area. Ultimately we assumed this could not be the place that the family was referring to, and so the driver took us to the second place he thought we meant.

This turned out to be the place the family was talking about.

It wasn’t a garden at all, it was a little district with ancient-style buildings (REALLY beautiful), restaurants, little malls, and places to bargain for cool souvenirs. It was a sunny day, much more sunny than the day before but still not a clear, clear day, and it was nice just walking through the area and taking it all in.

It was here I decided to get something for my Secret Santa present…we’d do the opening of the presents on Christmas Eve at the potluck we decided to put together. My Secret Santa person was Melissa, the most cheerful and sweetest teacher in the whole bunch…and I didn’t know what to get her, but as soon as I got to one corner of a street of bargaining stores, I knew.

This one lady was selling Chinese stamps of all shapes and sizes. Some were huge, bigger than your palm, others were teeny, no thicker than a pencil. I found one that was about an average stamp size, about maybe an inch wide in the shape of a square. The whole thing was long and shaped like a rectangular prism, and at the top was a pretty little Chinese carving, and it was made of this kind of jade green colored stone. It was pretty, but I should’ve bargained for a lower price. I could’ve gotten it down to a lower price than what I got it for…I’m still working on this bargaining thing, I never have enough opportunities to practice to really get it down. But I did bargain SUPER well for the box and stamp ink it came with, I said I didn’t want it at all, then named a super cheap price, kept insisting on the price, then walked away and finally she said, “Okay okay.” And that was that.

So we continued on and found a lot of really cool things being sold by the bargaining areas and other stores that weren’t bargaining. After that, we went to lunch with two of my dad’s co-workers.

Ever since I’ve been in China, these two co-workers (whose names once more I’m omitting) have helped me out during my stay. If ever I needed mail, they made sure it got to me as soon as possible without any problems. Also, whenever I landed in Shanghai, they always would treat me and my dad to dinner and make sure we had a great stay. Whenever I needed help in China, they were always an email a way. When I did the national Chinese competition in 2012, it was them that sent me a huge packet of information about Chinese history and culture, and studying that made a huge difference in how far I made it through the rounds. I don’t think I would have made it from Kunming all the way to the finals in Beijing if they hadn’t helped me.

It had been maybe almost two years since last I saw either of them, and so it was really great to see them again. We ate lunch at a Western restaurant that served these epic sub sandwiches with roasted meat, melted cheese, and toasted bread…mine had ham, olives, and different kinds of cheese and vegetables on it…it was so good. But it was huge and my stomach had shrunk a whole ton since I’ve been living in Xiangyang, and so I couldn’t finish the whole thing. To this day when I get hungry I still pine over the loss of that other half of the delicious sandwich. My dad’s co-workers and I got caught up on what’s been going on in our lives since last we met. They told me their stories, and I told them about how awesome the Chinese Bridge competition was (that’s the name of the 2012 competition).

Then we continued on, and our next stop was the Bund to see if we could see the skyline any better today. Any view was better than what we saw the day before. That was just ridiculous. As we were driving, we took some pretty cool pictures of the tallest buildings in Shanghai…we had to pass the buildings that made up the skyline to get to the Bund from where we were.

So when we got to the Bund, things were much better. But on the other hand, there were a whole lot more people. We could actually see the skyline clearly…but anything behind it we couldn’t see. And because the main reason why anybody goes to the Bund is to see the skyline, all of a sudden there were so many more people. The day before there were only a few scattered people walking around…but now the whole wharf was filled with people, and the souvenir stores, vendors, and small restaurants were booming again. We had to weasel our way through a couple people to get to the balcony for a picture of the skyline…luckily there was a small open spot we found. So we snapped our pictures and continued on.

Look at the skyline...as I said way better than before, but still not what it should be. The results of air pollution...

After that, we returned to Tai Kang Lu, where we spent the rest of the day. It’s entirely possible to spend the entire day at Tai Kang Lu because there’s just so much to do over there. There’s so many little stores to check out, and restaurants to eat at, and cafe/bars to chill at, and there’s photos to be snapped and bargaining to be done and even people to be met, Chinese and foreign alike. And we explored pretty much the entire area, which was filled with very interesting things to be sold. We first stopped for sushi nearby the cafe across the street we were at before...and the sushi was super good. None of us really trust the sushi deep in Xiangyang, except maybe at the Crowne Plaza...but the sushi in Shanghai is awesome because not only is it fresh (being by the coast) and delicious, but it also comes at a very cheap price. You can get an 8 roll for 20 kuai...which is way less than what you get a 4 roll for in the US. We then stopped by a bar and I ordered banana milkshake that was actually pretty good. So we bought a few things, and chilled and walked around for a bit, and then before you know it the day was almost done. So then we hopped back in our van and returned to the family’s house.

We had sushi, and I took this photo while we were waiting for it to be served with the intention that I would take another photo of the yummy sushi, but I was so hungry and it looked so good I devoured it immediately, forgetting to take the picture.L

One of the small bars we stopped at.

Banana smoothie! Once more, it looked so good I forgot to take a picture before I drank half of it D:

Check this out: IMPROVE FACIAL SHAPE AND FEATURES...what does that even mean? Are you saying the people that do this aren't beautiful the way they are? Hmmm....

Bohemian ambiance...

Better picture of bohemian ambiance....

Once more, we had a delicious dinner (this time we had grilled salmon- REALLY grilled salmon…I mean fresh from a grill- it’s not as cold in the winter in Shanghai as it is in other places- along with fresh bread with garlic and tomatoes and olive oil, and grilled eggplant and fresh salad, and wine, and they served us chocolate truffles for dessert….om nom noms) along with great conversation with great people. What an ideal way to end an evening. Another wonderfully warm shower and another wonderfully soft bed. It is a glorious feeling to be warm, clean, and smelling sweet all curled up under some fluffy covers. If all of that was amazing to me, then I KNOW I’m going to suffer from some major reverse culture shock when I get back to the States.