Shanghai (John Whiting)

After arriving in Shanghai, on our way to the hotel we got to see all of the lights of Shanghai since we arrived at night.  Some of the best lights were the area of the Shanghai Expo.  After checking into our hotel, I think I can speak for everyone when I saw we were astonished at our rooms!  It was probably the nicest hotel room I’ve ever been in.  I think everyone came down and complained about their room being too nice to Deborah and Jerry.  My king-size bed, amazing view, and waterfall shower did the trick to get me prepared for the next day.

A few of us learned our first night in Shanghai that when you step inside a taxi In China, you better pray you get back alive.  It was almost as if there are no rules when on the roads in China.  The best way to describe it is organized chaos.  Cars come at you from every direction, if no one is around with a red light you can go, speed limits don’t matter, and I’m surprised their horns still work with how much they use it.   It is actually very cheap despite the high gas prices, so that was nice.

We started off the next day at the Li & Fung Shanghai office.  From the front it didn’t appear like much, but the inside was amazing.  We learned a lot about the Chinese economy which help to put things into perspective a bit and would help set up the rest of our trip nicely in China.  We then went to Kohl’s factory where we saw pants and shorts being made that would come out in late summer fall.  We got to see the entire process from cutting the fabric and sewing together pockets all the way up to the finished product and even getting it ready for the stores.  At night we were treated to an INCREDIBLE acrobat show.  I’ll let the pictures do the speaking for me.

Our last day was filled with sightseeing!  We truly felt like we were in China as we visited a fairly large temple that featured numerous jade Buddha’s.  We also got lucky because they were performing a ceremony when we got there.  We were given a little free time to explore the market around the temple where we attempted to haggle the price down… some successful, others including me, not so much.   Either way, it was extremely fun and got a keepsake to take home.  We then went to the highest observatory deck in the world at the Shanghai World Financial Center.  The view was incredible!  They had windows on the floor so you could look straight down.  Last but not least… Walmart.  The entire first floor was all food and the 2^nd was everything else.  It was packed as more and more bus loads of people arrived from all over the city.  It was interesting to see the differences between this Walmart and ones back in the US.

Time to leave.  On the morning of this sad day I went to the market that we were at last night to do some last minute shopping.  My last meal in Shanghai was a Chicken Burger at KFC that had peas, carrots, and corn inside of the burger and it was quite delicious.  I knew we had a 13-hour flight ahead of us and I was dreading every minute leading up to stepping on the plane.  I am extremely grateful that I got to experience China on this spring break trip with 34 or so other individuals.  I said this would be a once in a lifetime trip, although it was, I definitely plan on coming back.