We boarded a plane for Shanghai in Guilin with only a limited awareness that a typhoon was currently rocking the Chinese coastline. However, near the end of our flight, we became very aware of the weather. The plane hit mild turbulence that never seemed to want to stop. The shaking continued for a while, but that was nothing compared to the point where we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped a couple of hundred feet. As if that wasn't enough, the plane was now filled with crying, screaming and praying passengers - which can only make a bad situation more stressful. We began our approach into Shanghai, but approximately 500 feet from the tarmac (the ground was very much in sight) we felt the plane begin to pull up. The next thing we knew, the wheels were retracting. An aborted landing on top of the turbulence and near fall was not reassuring to me, my Lucky Jade Buddha, or the two girls frantically praying in the next aisle. Still shaking, the plane made it's way to Pudong International Airport, and a bumpy but safe landing. We were finally on the ground.
The next day we were still caught in the aftermath of the typhoon. It was raining, but not too terribly. We went to check out the Jade Buddha Temple (no relation to the Lucky Jade Buddhas on our necks). It was one of the more spectacular temples I've seen here, and extra impressive was that it was in the middle of a massive, modern metropolis. (There I go again with that classy alliteration.)
Temples like these are not known simply for there ornate decorations. They all boast vegetarian restaurants to compliment their monks' diets. With some positive encouragement from Corey, we checked out the restaurant at the Jade Buddha Temple. Needless to say we were a little... confused... by the menu...
In the end, it turned out to simply be tofu or bean substitute, but that really doesn't make the wording any less funny. It was good though. Surprisingly good.
After the temple, the weather took a turn for the worse and the rain picked up again. We spent a good chunk of the evening soaking wet trying to make it to the sacred ground of TGI Friday's. Three cases of hypothermia later, we made it. And we all know how worth it that was.
The next day brought with it no sign of the typhoon, and with the sun shining, we made our way to the neighboring water town of Zhouzhuang. Billed as the best of the water towns, we were all excited to see a part of what Marco Polo referred to as "The Venice of the East". When we got there, it was something else entirely. Sure, there were canals, and it was nice-ish. But Zhouzhuang had become a cesspool of disgusting consumerism with nothing but aggravated hawkers trying to get us to buy the same crap that the store right next to them had.
The food situation was even worse though...
Every restaurant in the town boasted the same spectacularly bad menu, leading us to wonder if there wasn't one massive kitchen under the water that served up disgusting "Rural Chicken" and other such favorites. We did get to see a turtle being ripped open, so at least we knew it was fresh.
I shouldn't rag too hard on Zhouzhuang though. Despite the annoying commerciality (not a real word it would appear) of the place that ruined the entire day, we did find one most excellent shop.
When traveling with my parents, we were often subjected to tourist trap "silk factories" or "jade factories" or "whatever the crap factories". That's the price you pay for tours it would seem. The bus we took to Zhouzhuang was technically a Chinese tour bus, so we were lucky enough to be able to show Matt what a "silk factory" looked like. The only thing was that this was 100% more ridiculous than the ones we were taken too with my family. Sure there was the 10 second demonstration on how silk is made, but then, we were taken to a room and... well... I'd want you to see for yourself, but YouTube is still MIA, and Blogger Video seems to be having issues as well. Until it's all sorted out, imagine women clearly plucked right out of the factory miserably modeling the goods that no one wants to by, getting to walk down a runway to the powerful pipes of old school Britney. That's China for ya.
Distraught, yet ultimately better off thanks to an Osama Bin-Laden looking bust of me, we returned to Shanghai where we got to check out Jon's appartment which boasts a more than a little impressive view of the Shanghai Skyline.
We were actually able to move into a vacant apartment in their MASSIVE complex for the rest of our stay, which meant that when we left our apartment the next morning, we were treated to quite the view of the soon to be second largest building in the world (The Shanghai Financial Tower) dwarfing the current fourth tallest building (The Jin Mao Building).
The sun still shinning, we left Shanghai again for the actual city Marco Polo dubbed Eastern Venice. Suzhou has since become something else entirely though - a sprawling metropolis in its own right. We meandered around the city a bit seemingly missing out on everything there is to do there. We did stumble onto some strange Midwestern missionaries who were out to influence the powerful economic triangle of Shanghai, Suzhou and Singapore. Wait huh? Well, I guess Jesus doesn't specialize in geometry OR economics. They were nice enough though, offering up their map to us. Still though... VERY strange meeting.
We traveled around Suzhou by motorized bike cart, and after one broke down, we hoped into another (to the same destination for a third of the price). After they cursed at each other a bit in Chinese, our new bike driver struggled to communicate to us (all in Chinese... look at us go!) that for the 10 RMB we promised to pay him, he would stick with us for the rest of the evening.
The mysterious bike cab guy, and his bike cab. Was he an angel? The missionaries might have thought so.
He took us around to a really nice bridge, and told us where we originally wanted to go was closed until later. (Of course, this was all done in Chinese, so all translations are guessed at.)
He took us on quite the tour, eventually dropping us off for a bizarre night time reenactment of some war or something.
As if it wasn't weird enough, the only other people at this all-in-Chinese reenactment was a large group of Spanish tourists, who were paired with a poor tour guide who barely spoke English. Corey was put to work as an impromptu translator for the group who at most times resembled frustrated turkeys running around with their heads cut off.
Culturally enriched both by the reenactment and our European encounter, we returned to Shanghai.
Matt's last day with us was our Shanghai day. This continued our trend started in Hong Kong with only seeing the city we are in on the last day. We were prepared for disappointment having been told Shanghai isn't that great, but I was pleasantly surprised regardless. We walked around the French Concession which channeled the positive vibes of way downtown Manhattan, and we checked out other musts like ancient Yu Gardens.
We even got to... drink... some of Shanghai's famous soup dumplings.
Our last stop was the Bund and its striking view of the Pudong area.
Since our apartment in Jon's complex was in Pudong, we got to take the SPECTACULAR tourist tunnel under the water. Words could do this thing NO justice, so just promise me whenever you make it to Shanghai, you will take the tourist tunnel.
Matt packed up his stuff and we had our tearful farewell in the bowels of the Shanghai Subway.
With Matt off to Beijing, Corey and I went to take in a modern take on the Shanghai Acrobatic scene. It was... insane.
Seven motorcycles in that thing... seven.
The next morning, Corey and I made our way out of Shanghai. We got to take the super fast, super cool Mag-Lev train to the airport.
So fast it even had time to pick up a bird along the way!
Eight minutes and 30 kilometers later, we were at Pudong Airport, ready to hop our plane to Dalian. Very much incident free compared to the LAST time we tried to fly out of Shanghai.
I hope you enjoyed this three part trip extravaganza. Keep checking back for more Chinese goodness soon!
- Shawn
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