Shanghai

After Zhengzhou, I went back to Beijing for a few days to regroup with some friends and relax. On the 13th, I left Beijing on a night train to Shanghai with one of my friends. We were both in the waiting room before the train departed, and we were astonished at the amount of people going to be on our train. We figured the train must have a lot of cars because that particular week was a holiday and a lot of people were going home to see their family. We walked over to our car and handed the attendant our tickets. We stepped on the train and couldn't believe what we saw net. The whole isle of the train was filled with people, standing. All the seats were full excluding our two seats, but our train had about 50 people who had bought standing tickets all the way to Shanghai. That train ride was something that even Chinese people have never heard of. When we got back to Beijing My friend's mom said the train company shouldn't really be doing that. But anyways we were on the train, and we at least had seats so I was happy. Luckily we sat on the side with two seats so we could switch off between sleeping on the window side and getting squished by other peoples behinds. In all the train ride was 14 hours and we were so happy to get out of that car. Neither of us moved out of our seats because even going to the bathroom would have meant squeezing through 30 people. We took the subway directly to the hostel which was really nice. We were in a eight person dorm which wasn't bad at all. They also had a laundry machine which only cost five RMB (I didn't have a laundry machine in Beijing so I was really happy when I got Shanghai).

The first day in Shanghai we just rested and watched the World Cup. Later we went out the Bund and took pictures. On day two we went to the Expo which was enormous. We only went to three countries' pavilion (US, Canada, and Tailand), but they were all pretty good. My favorite was the Canadian pavilion because the staff were incredibly professional and friendly. However inside was a bit small and all over the place. The US pavilion was really cool and the videos were distinctly American. Overall the US pavilion was good and I enjoyed the short movies they played. We walked around the rest of the Expo and took pictures next to other pavilions and just enjoyed the view. We left at 7:30 and had spent over six hours walking around the Expo. It was a cool experience, except the whole time I was in there I was wondering, what was the point of all this? Each pavilion barely scraped the surface of each countries culture. A big part of the Expo is that it allows the city to renovate their infrastructure and improve its pubic transportation. If you think about the Expo as a giant culture fest it makes sense. It's just there to give people a brief introduction to each country hoping people will want to learn more.

Day three we went to the Shanghai museum (merely because it was free and had air conditioning). It was fairly interesting but we spent about an hour or two in there briskly looking at the paintings and ceramics. Later we walked through the peoples' park and peoples' square which was relaxing.

Day four was really a waste of a day because we didn't have anything to do until our train left at 10 pm. We talked through Century Park in the suburbs of Shanghai which was the most boring part of the whole trip. After we went to the French Concession which was okay. We found a crepe place but decided not to go because it was even more expensive than if we were in France! Later we went back to the hostel restaurant to watch the World Cup because it was really close to the train station. This train ride was much more comfortable because there were only a few standers. We got back to Beijing at noon the next day and I've been in Beijing ever since. My Chinese program starts tomorrow and I won't be able to talk in English at all! I'm not sure if I'm going to be updating y blog because I don't want to break the Language pledge. We'll see how it goes because I want to keep this blog up. Maybe I'll have time tonight to write about Beijing.