Our First Full Day in China

Our marathon day started dark and early at 2 am, when my cough woke up both me and my mom. I seemed to have a fever and was dehydrated, but after an Advil, some water, and lots of tossing and turning I fell back asleep until our alarm went off at 6:20 am. I then got up, took a quick shower and my mom and I headed out for a tour of Chinese breakfast foods from Untour.

The adventure began on the Metro, which is our main mode on transportation other than walking while we are in Shanghai. My mom was able to easily navigate us through the insanely busy corridors of the metro. When we emerged we were near Xiangyang Park, the meeting place for our tour, but we arrived fifteen minutes early so we started exploring. We found the park to be a peaceful oasis compared to the hustle and bustle of the city and us Colorado gals couldn't appreciate it more. There was no shortage of elderly folks doing Tai Chi in groups, playing games like badminton, and dancing with fans and swords. We even saw a few people doing water calligraphy, which is writing in Chinese characters on the sidewalk with just water and a brush, which will disappear in about 10 minutes, making it a unique art form.

After exploring we found our group and began our tour. Our guide was from the UK, but majored in Chinese and has lived here for a few years. Two other members of our group were from Australia and two sisters were from Minnesota, but one had recently moved here. We began by walking through the french concession area, which the Western world took over after China's loss in the Opium war. We found many street vendors selling all kinds of breakfast goodies like sticky rice balls, dough sticks, soy milk, scallion pancakes, and jianbing (a crepe like meal with egg, cilantro, red bean paste, chili sauce, scallions, and a crispy wanton in the middle). The rest of the group also had some non-vegetarian dumplings filled with soup and pork. We also got some tea infused hard boiled eggs, hand pulled wheat noodles, and bamboo tofu. Our food finished off with a delicious egg waffle, which is similar to a waffle at home except instead of having a grid they appeared to have little egg shapes. Between food stops, our guide also took us through an ally neighborhood, which consists of houses that were once for one family and quite grand, but now hold about twenty families in one room each. Surprisingly these relatively shabby one room family apartments sell for about 1.5 million American dollars because of their central location. We also stopped by a wet market, which is similar to a grocery store except all of the food is amazingly fresh, in fact, the fish were swimming in little bins!

After our tour ended we were both full and exhausted. Luckily we had signed up for and hour long foot massage, the perfect opportunity to unwind. We began by soaking our feet in tea, then got a quick back rub, and onto the feet! We were served tea and watermelon and while we were being pampered our amazing tour guide helped us by going to the pharmacy to get me some more ibuprofen.

After our amazing foot massage we were told to just rest there, which we did for twenty minutes before leaving and heading to the Jing'an Buddhist Temple. This temple isn't really expected because it is mixed in with hundreds of skyscrapers and monstrous buildings, but it is enormous and very peaceful inside. Many people were burning incense while bowing in every direction. When we got to the main part of the temple we were amazed to find it was made entirely of teak with an enormous statue of Buddha inside. We continued to explore the temple and eventually ventured to another one, the Jade temple. This temple is under renovation and did not provide the same peaceful atmosphere of the Jing'an Temple. However, the Jade Buddha, which we couldn't take pictures of, was stunning. We also visited the toilets and I was quiet unimpressed to find a bunch of squatters. Dreading having to use one I checked every stall for a normal toilet and eventually found one. Being quite tired and still feeling unwell we returned to the hotel and I took a quick nap.

When I woke up my mom, dad, who just came in from Tokyo, and I went out to the financial district to see all of the lights that come on at night. The air quality level was it 167, and unhealthy level for the general population. I breathed through the hood of my jacket, which was unpleasant, but better that the alternative. We managed to find a place for dinner, called Element Fresh, that had food similar to what we would eat at home. I had some hummus, a smoothie, and pumpkin soup, a nice break from the always fried and sauced Chinese food we've been eating. We walked over to the nearby river to see the lights on the other side, which were quite smeared with the smog. Having enough dirty air, which a local told us "isn't bad at all" we headed back to our hotel room, where I crashed immediately, the reason this blog in one night of sleep late.

Our final thoughts on the day leave us feeling like Shanghai is an interesting, worthwhile place to visit for a few days, once. We intend to continue exploring through the smog because we aren't likely to return a second time.