With our last few hours remaining in Shanghai the morning was free time and people were able to do as they pleased. Many people either decided to catch up on sleep, go to a “knock-off” market, or go to the Shanghai Museum.
Being that the Shanghai Museum was free and a number of people decide to take advantage of the free cultural experience. The museum contains around 120,000 pieces of cultural relics from China’s past dynasties – focusing more specifically on the Qing dynasty. The museum was established in 1952, and the current building opened in 1995 with a circular design meant to symbolize a round heaven and square earth. The museum was four levels with each wing of the floors contain various artifacts. While the highlights are the bronze ware, ceramics, calligraphy, and painting, it also has excellent displays of jade, furniture, coins, and Chinese seals. The exhibits that were particularly interesting were the calligraphy and the coins. The calligraphy items were definitely the most numerous collection of the museum, almost taking up an entire floor all to itself. Not only did you have calligraphy from different dynasties that showed the changes in particular styles and techniques but also to amount of art and designs that went with it. People also enjoyed the calligraphy rooms because all the display cases were motion activated. When you walked into the room it was completely dark. When you approached a display case the light would slowly turn on to reveal the calligraphy roll behind the glass. Thus, many of us took great fun in quickly walking by all the display cases and watching the entire room fill up with light. To the Chinese, calligraphy is more than mere form of communication; it is one of the highest art forms. The style of this cursive script was typically wild movements that combine delicate and forceful strokes to create Chinese characters. The coin room was equally awesome not only because it displayed many different coins from China’s past, but also all the different ancient coins from surrounding countries that traded with China or had tried to invade China. After a long time at the museum we returned to the hotel and gathered up the rest of our luggage and headed toward the airport. The lines at the airport moved very smoothly and we were able to get through with no luggage being overweight. The flight was easy and short with food service that consisted of fried rice with shrimp, orange juice, and red bean dessert. We were also served a bun/ piece of bread that many of us thought was just a plain old dinner roll. Only to discover that it had meat in it – first and only experience with a Chinese hot dog.
We arrived in Hong Kong and immediately there was a different feel to the city. Hong Kong has a much more Western feel than Shanghai and Beijing due to the long British influence. It was raining when we arrived and the climate overall felt much different. It was much warmer and also quite humid. During the bus ride to the hotel the first view of the skyline was incredible and the large electronic billboards lit up the city: picture Times Square but on an even more massive scale and with mountains in the background. Needless to say the view of the city is incredible and unbelievably massive.
Being that it was such a long excursion to Hong Kong many of us were exhausted and did not do much other than eat dinner and go to bed. A few of those who ventured away from the hotel saw people doing fan dancing on their way to the restaurant. This was really interesting and certainly not something you see regularly if ever in the United States. Overall it was a tiring day of traveling but packed with new experiences much like every other day of this trip.
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