The Bund and People's Park

This morning we woke up at 5:30 without an alarm, much to my annoyance. However, it did give us a good view of the morning smog, which was literally breathtaking. We eventually went to eat breakfast in our hotel with my dad and his business partner, Allison. The familiar breakfast was quite nice and had tons of choices like omelets, preserved duck eggs, which I stayed far away from, fruit, meat dumplings, waffles, fried rice, and more

We left the hotel around 10:30, a nicer time than yesterday's 7 am departure. Our first stop was to buy face masks like you would find at a doctors office to help ward off the 167 air quality index. To give some perspective, Boulder has an index of 10 and Houston, TX has an index of just 45. Upon putting on the face mask I realized it was a sacrifice in a way because in such a hot place breathing more hot air and trapping it against your skin isn't pleasant, however I really do hope it helped out. We headed to the subway to go to the Bund, an extremely famous area of Shanghai next to the Huangpu River.

On the Bund we found many American branded stores like Forever 21 and Abercrombie before walking down the insanely crowded sidewalk to the river. Here there was an amazing view of the Shanghai skyline and we stopped for some pictures. Next, we headed over to the Peace Hotel built in 1929. It once hosted some of the most elevated, western elite.

Next we headed over to People’s Park, where we stopped for a bit of lunch, which was quite the experience. Our guide book mentioned Yunnan Road, which has many local restaurants. It suggested a few, and we found one with a good health rating, Wu Fang Zhai. We were completely overwhelmed when the menu had no English and meals were ordered at a counter. My mom showed a woman working there a note we asked our guide from the breakfast tour to write saying “We do not eat meat or fish.” She took us to the second level of the building, which was sit down and much less over whelming. We looked at the menu on our own and found the English food descriptions were not all that helpful, saying things like “Three silk two yellow” and “Placard crab flour small cage.” We also ran into some peculiar images of dishes on the menu. Eventually we ordered veggie fried rice, grapes with pineapple, and some sort of dumpling, at least we thought we did. We were absolutely baffled when the grapes and pineapple came. I made my mom try it first, afraid of what it could be. It took us a while to identify it, but our best guess is it was prunes and potato on top, but we can’t be sure. Next came our vegetable stir fry, or a plate of nothing but sautéed bok choy. The restaurant staff must have thought we were insane because when they brought that plate we instantly started to crack up. We laughed for quite some time. I guess the lesson there is when you think life gives you confidence, it is actually just giving you a bowl of prunes. The bok choy

turned out to be very tasty and we waited and waited until eventually our dumplings came. Again, my mom tried it first because I was afraid there might be meat in it. There wasn’t and it turned out they were delicious potato dumplings! So good in fact that we ordered more, which may have been a mistake because it took an extremely long time to arrive. After lunch we headed out for some more egg waffles.

Our next stop was the Shanghai Museum, in which I had one of the strangest experiences of my life. A small group of local girls about my age came up to me and asked if they could take a picture with me and, confused, I said sure. After them there was another group that wanted a picture and another and another and another. Eventually the stream seemed to slow and my mom and I dashed toward the escalator. Our guide from the breakfast tour did warn us that different looking people often are bombarded like this, but I didn't it would happen to me! Upstairs we checked out two interesting galleries: Jade carvings from 600 BC to 1911 and Ming and Qing Dynasty furniture. Seeing items so old was cool and not something you see a lot of at home.

Next we went to the Urban Planning Museum. The highlight here was an enormous model of what the city of Shanghai will look like in years to come. The sheer size was amazing. I think I located our hotel in the model, but with the thousands of building it is impossible to know.

We headed back to our hotel and both my mom and I crashed hard before heading to the Circus. Exhausted, I managed to drag myself out of bed and we navigated to the show. There were more tourists than locals, but the amazing bikes, hoop jumping, balancing, trapeze, trampolines, and motorcycles made it well worth it. I of course was too tired to stay awake for most of the second half, but even just the part I did see was well worth it.

When I got back to the hotel room I kicked off my shoes and fell into bed, instantly asleep. There is no doubt that touristing is seriously hard work.