Monday, September 18, 2017 - Shanghai

First a word of explanation.  We asked Julian why we couldn’t get Google or Gmail or Blogger and he said it was because the United States sided with the Dalai Lama, so the Chinese government blocked them!  This entry will post when we are settled in Thailand tomorrow evening.  Now back to our regularly-scheduled program!

The Holiday Inn breakfast buffet is eye-popping!  They have to appeal to so many different international visitors that you can get just about anything you want!!  It’s so hard to choose!!  We are starting to get to know some of the people on our tour and that’s fun.

After breakfast we hurry back up to the room and are downstairs in time to meet Julian at 8:45, our appointed hour.  We all hop on the bus and head for our first stop, the Shanghai Museum, in downtown Shanghai.  The drive takes about an hour and Julian is a wealth of information about Shanghai. 

Shanghai is “the city above the sea”   and is one of the four largest cities in China.  The looong bridge we saw last night is the longest bridge in China at 34 km.  The population of the city is 21 million, with two airports and 78 long-distance bus stations.  There is a floating population of 3.5 million.

The trees we see everywhere are camphor trees.  When a girl is born, the family plants to camphor trees and when she marries they are cut down to make boxes for her wedding gifts, generally of silk which is a major Chinese product.  Nowadays many people live in apartments and can’t plant trees, so the boxes are purchased.  Camphor oil is also good for putting on mosquito bites.

All the beautiful furniture is made of mahogany;  but there aren’t any mahogany trees!  That’s because the silk traders took their silk to southeast Asia and couldn’t bring back empty ships because that is unsafe;  so they brought back mahogany!

Truly a modern city, or at least what we could see.

Very large Buddhist temple in the heart of the city.  All yellow buildings are either temples of palaces.

 The Huangpu river divides the city into an eastern half and a western half.  It also used to divide the rich from the poor.  This changed after the president visited in the 1980s and encouraged the construction of a a new commercial center on the “poor” side of the river.  The four largest buildings in Shanghai are in this center.  There is one that was designed by a Japanese architect with a large circular hole at the top.  It looked like the Japanese flag and the Chinese government made him change it.  Now it looks like a bottle opener!  And from the side it looks like a Japanese sword!

Newly constructed buildings are all designed to sway in a typhoon.

There are four million cars in Shanghai, with a thousand more being bought each day.  They are primarily VWs and Buicks.  GM has two plants in China.  No one buys Japanese cars;  they are called “moving coffins” because they are so light.  (As a side note, the Chinese antipathy toward anything Japanese is not well concealed by our guide!)  A Buick costs about $20,000 to purchase;  however, you must also buy a license plate.  If you do so in Shanghai, it will cost another $15,000, to discourage even more traffic on the congested streets.  Smart people, therefore, go to a close-by town to purchase their cars and plates, where a plate might cost only $200!  The drawback to this plan is that you can only drive on the surface roads.  If you are caught on one of the elevated expressways you get four points on your license.  If you get twelve points in a year, you have to take the driving course again.  It is 380 hours long and costs $2,500!!

There are taxis in six different colors.  The green ones are best but you should never take a red one.  They are private and will rip you off. 

“Do you know BMW?”  “Sure, Bavarian Motor Works”.  “Yes, German car; but not in China.  Here is biking, metro, and walking!”  That’s how most Chinese travel in the cities.

Housing is extremely expensive which is why there are so many apartment buildings.  If you purchase a house, you may only live there for seventy years because the government owns the land and can kick you out then.  A one-hundred square meter house in a not-so-good part of Shanghai will cost about 8 million yuan or about 1.1 million dollars.  A house in a good location will go four about $25,000 per square meter!!

The air quality in Beijing is so bad that it is call “Gray Jing”!  Another funny thing – iPhones are called “kidney phones” because young men who can’t afford one will sell a kidney to get the money!!

Another interesting tidbit – there is a dish called drunken shrimp.  They put the shrimp in Chinese alcohol with is about 50 to 60% and leave them for about half an hour, until they are drunk!  Then they eat them alive!

Our first stop of the day is the Shanghai Museum, which is four stories tall and filled with cultural treasures.  As we’re waiting in line for security, we meet Helen from Washington State.  She’s a retired special ed teacher, and a quilter!  There are several other educators in our group, too!

We only have an hour to see as much as possible and start at the top, working downward.  The very first exhibit is clothing from the many different parts of China, though it’s history!  We might have spent all day there!  We tear ourselves away and investigate as many other galleries as possible, including the jade gallery, the furniture gallery (Wow!) and the bronzes.  We really needed a whole day!!

Our next stop will be the silk museum, so Julian educates us before we arrive.  Silk worms will only eat mulberry leaves and the leaves have to be dry and clean or the worms will get diarrhea and die!  They are described as “delicate as babies”!  Their droppings can be put into pillows to cure headaches. Each cocoon produces a filament that is one to one and a half kilometers long!  It takes two hundred cocoons to produce enough silk for one man’s tie.  Good silk thread is made from twisting together eight filaments.  Cheap silk goods are made from threads with only two or three filaments and will come apart after a few washings.  “You get what you pay for.”

The cocoons are put in hot water to kill the pupa;  however the Cantonese will eat them fried.  Julian says they taste awful!  That’s why it is said that the Cantonese will eat anything with four legs, except a table”!

Stretching the filaments to make a silk duvet, which is covered in bamboo.

When you want something you can't have, take a picture!

At the silk museum we are shown the entire process from worm to cocoon to filaments to actual silk products.  They sell clothing and ties and purses and sheet sets;  but the best thing is silk duvets!! They are so light-weight and guaranteed not to bunch up or make you too hot.  It’s an effective sales pitch, especially since Ginger loves hers and I’ve always wanted a duvet!  She tells me not to get the silk cover, though, because it will make the duvet slide right off the bed!!  Now I’ve got to carry this thing for another three weeks or so!!  But it will be worth it!

After the silk museum comes lunch with our new best friends.  To get there we drove along the Bund and could see all the financial buildings that have been there for more than a hundred years.  They include the Bank of China, the Customs House, the China Merchants Bank, AIA, and numerous others. 

We are seated at two round tables for ten or so. There is a large glass lazy susan in the middle of each table and the serving dishes are put on it.  People serve themselves from the closest dishes and then the glass is moved around for access to new goodies.  We have hot tea and beer to drink and I think there must have been ten different offerings, each one delicious.  

We are right by the river, so after lunch we climb upstairs to see the modern architecture across the river, making a stark contrast to the Bund.  We wander a little further down to get a different angle, then go back down to street level to check out the Bund a little more.

See the one that looks like a bottle opener?

This one is a copy of Big Ben and sings every quarter hour.

Back to the bus for the Embroidery Museum.  These are truly works of art.  Some look like photographs and others like oil painting.  It is hard to believe that they are done with needle and thread.  Some are even two sided, with a different image on each side!  There is a short demonstration, then we are free to gaze in awe and wonder, just like in any art museum.  There are price tags; but for us it’s a museum!  They also have silk rugs that remind us of our trip to Turkey.

Next we are driven to Shanghai’s luxury shopping street, Nanjing Road,  It is like the Champs Elysees in Paris or Rodeo Drive.  Julian warns us not to go with anyone who says he has a warehouse filled with bargains.  He says we will go through here kitchens, two bathrooms and wind up locked in a warehouse until we agree to buy something!  Also, don’t agree to help someone practice his English over a cup of coffee.  After a few minutes he or she will remember that they have to go home and study, and you will be stuck with the bill.  Those two coffees might cost as much as two hundred dollars! 

We’re not big shoppers, so we start by having a mint ice cream cone and people watching.  Then we head back to our meeting spot; but we take a detour down a side street and Ginger finds a gorgeous blue and gold tea cup that comes with it’s own diffuser and lid!  It is worth noting that we weren’t as impressed with this street as with others we’ve seen elsewhere,  certainly it is nothing like Tokyo!

Back on the bus and we dinner which is quite similar to lunch but with different dishes and different tablemates!  The five Sinorama tours have combined for dinner and the show that’s coming next.  We are seated with some of the French Canadians some of whom speak English, so we have a lovely time.  This time we find out what beer we’re drinking.  Budweiser!!  A lot like drinking water but without the benefits!  (Some of our group decided not to pay for the extra outing, so they have taken the bus back to the hotel, or stayed on the shopping street and will make their own way home.)

Back on the bus we go to the fanciest hotel in Shanghai, the Portman Ritz-Carlton.  It’s where President Clinton stayed!  The Shangai Centre is part of the complex and we ride the escalator to the top floor, where there is a theater that probably seats about a thousand people.  Julian says he will tell us the regulation – which states that there will be no videos or still photography.  He then says that in China regulations are sometimes suggestions and that as long as you don’t use flash, photos are probably all right.  I’m willing to take the chance, especially since the entire audience is made up of Sinorama clients!  We’re going to see an acrobatic show.

The performers are all lovely and skilled although not really acrobats.  There are several balancing acts, an aerial silk artist, a couple who work on a pole and also a magician, a juggler, and two clowns, one of whom spins plates and throws knives!  They are, fittingly enough, the comedy relief!  

After the show we drag back to the bus and head home.  Even though there’s no internet or Google, there is still typing to do and photos to post.  Ginger manages to get on line and, using Safari, can access Bing;  but my machine is still stuck on the old password and it doesn’t matter anyway.  Tomorrow night we’ll be in Thailand, and I’ll bet they don’t care about the U.S. and the Dalai Lamas!

We’re to meet Julian in the morning at 9:15, with our luggage, so we can move on to the next stop and eventually fly to Bangkok!  (That sounds even more exotic to me than China!)