Shanghai!

Shanghai!

After a 1 ½ hour flight from Beijing, we arrived in Shanghai. Our guide graciously ordered Big Macs from McDonalds for all of us because we didn’t have time for dinner before the Chinese acrobatic show. The Chinese LOVE McDonalds and KFC. We saw only a couple of Starbucks.





The snack on the plane looked like chocolate chip cookie dough balls. Yum! Uh, no, it ended being seaweed-coated nuts.

Our wonderful guide, Scottie, named himself after Scottie Pippin. He showed us his hand-drawn maps of Shanghai which he had colored with crayons himself. Shanghai has a population greater than Australia and has 1.8 million cars. The government controls the number of cars by limiting the number of license plates. They auction off license plates once a month for $5000-6000 a piece (normally $50).
Here's a guy loading down his scooter with groceries and supplies.

A mom and her daughter on a scooter; no helmet, no child-safety seat.


Want to take your dog for a ride? Just put him in the basket of your scooter:

China has 50% of the world’s cement, 35% of the world’s metal and steel. And 70% of the worlds building cranes. The scaffolding on the buildings is made of bamboo:



Just 16-17 years ago, Shanghai had 3 high rise buildings. Today they have 3000 and continue to build. A new condo, about $300,000 comes with unpaved floor, no appliances, and unpainted walls.

Shanghai’s International Flag Exhibition is actually laundry hanging outside all windows of the high rises. The outside of the buildings is covered in colorful laundry.



The acrobatic show at the Ritz Carlton was superb. The stunts and acts were amazing. After the show, we checked into our lovely hotel and caught the very end of the Chinese version of “Deal or No Deal” on TV.

Here's some acrobatic women balancing on chairs.



This first group of children born in the “one birth” policy are admittedly spoiled only children. They don’t know how to cook or clean and they do very little around the house. We asked one family who we visited who washes the dishes. They said that grandma washes and cleans up. The result of this one baby per family rule is 300 million less people since 1980. There are less American adoptions now due to a severe imbalance of the male-female ratio.

In the pre-1080’s there were very little indoor bathrooms. People used public bath houses. The Chinese have a saying, “The Americans shower every day and shop once a week. The Chinese shop every day and shower once a week. There are Eastern toilets and Western toilets. Here’s an Eastern toilet:


IF, and I mean IF toilet paper is supplied, it is in the main area of the bathroom, next to the sinks. And IF it is supplied, you use it to dry your hands after washing them, too. The 15 women in my group call ourselves the Sisterhood of the Western Toilet. Whoever hits the bathroom first checks out if there are an western toilets, which stall they are in, and then passes the word down to the rest of the women in line.

We passed by several IKEA stores on this trip. We went to the Shanghai Museum, to a silk rug factory and then to a Mongolian BBQ. After lunch, we went to the Jade Buddha Temple.



We had dinner at a restaurant which was also an art gallery of embroidered pictures. We didn’t know until we were in the bus on the way home that we could have bought them for 70% off. Everything is bartered here.

We walked along the famous Bund pier during the day and went on a boat ride on the Huang Po River at night to see the beautiful skyline. All the buildings were lit up in an array of moving colors. It was a gorgeous evening.




You know how we call our good dishes, “China.” They call theirs “porcelain.” Out of 1.3 billion people, only 30 million are in the Communist Party. They follow you and check on you for 2 years before you’re admitted to the party. You may not belong to any religion, if you want to be in the Communist Party.

The Chinese government gives money to the people who have to be relocated due to the dam, construction, or new roads or subways. They relocate them just out of the city to brand new towns. Then the government installs new bus lines and builds subways out to the new areas so people can get back to town for work. As they tear down the old housing (with no bathrooms), new high rises are built. The government will also give you money to combine with your own savings to purchase a high rise (land not included).

We took a nice clean train to Suzhou, which is called the “Garden City” or the “Eastern Venice.” At the train station, our guide told us to stick together like sticky rice and to elbow the people who were trying to get ahead of us in line. The seats on the train reclined and rotated to face back.

There is a leaning pagoda in Suzhou, like the leaning tower of Pisa. It’s an average sized city, about 2 million people! Here's a pretty garden that we visited:



We took a beautiful boat ride down the canals which reminded us of Venice, Italy. The homes are right on the water. Women were doing their laundry in the canals. The gardens are gorgeous. We saw boats decorated with hundreds of flowers, in preparation for a parade the following week.






We went to a silk factory and saw how silk is made-silkworms, cocoons, reeling, weaving, etc. I bought some silk scarves.

This afternoon, a speaker came to talk to us about the cultural revolution. He was a teacher at the time, so he spoke about the hardships. This time period destroyed China. The educated and elite were all sent to farms to be taught by the illiterate peasants. It set China back immensely. He admitted that it was Mao’s big error, but the people think that Mao did more good than harm so they still honor and respect him. Mao helped people in the long run, he says.

We visited a Senior Center. Former professionals teach classes to their peers who go 2-3 times a week. The life expectancy used to be 60 for women and 57 for men. It is now 82 for women and 79 for men! Some women danced and sang for us.

In Shanghai, there are 45 colleges, 800 middle schools, and 800 elementary schools, with 50 kids in a class. A neighborhood could have 98,000 people! In 1993, the “no excuses” bridge was built from West to East Shanghai so the husband can’t make excuses anymore why he was unable to come home.

Next we went to a market.




Look at these gigantic cucumbers!

Then we visited the condo of a middle-class family. The grandparents, parents, and one daughter live here. They served a nice lunch and we were able to take pictures.


Their refrigerator was in the dining room.


There are no single family homes in the cities. The few in the outskirts are called villas. And we were warned not to visit the “Suzie Wong” areas.

On the way to the airport, we took the Mag-Lev train which went 285 mph! It took us 7 minutes and 20 seconds to get the the airport and then we had to wait for the bus which had our luggage, another hour.

Here's a picture of the ceiling at the airport:


We flew to Wuhan and then took a bus to Jingzhou to board our boat on the Yangtze River.

Next…Yangtze River Cruise…