Shanghai/Beijing-Days 4 and 5

Day 4 (Wednesday) - Shanghai

When we went to the Shanghai museum the first time, we went from the fourth floor down and ran out of time to see the first floor. Just before entering the museum, close to the shrubs near the entryway, we saw a street cat crouch in anticipation of big game. Nothing I haven't seen before, but next the cat lunged forward and caught a pigeon.We left the cat to feast, and went in to see the first floor exhibits. One room was filled with sculptures, mostly leaders and icons from the Tang dynasty There was a head carved from wood and stone Buddas that survived centuries with only slight malformities like broken hands or a cracked nose. Looking at the Buddas I imagined how great it would be to reach Nirvana, but then recalled something about the belief that life is suffering. Personally I'd like to think we should live for whatever makes you happy (unless that something is something that harms someone else). The next exhibit was the Chinese bronze era. Who knew they drank so much wine (especially considering the less than delicious wine I've sampled from China and Taiwan)? There were dozens of wine vessels on display, some large enough to hold wine for what seemed like an entire family and some intricately etched personal jugs. Bronze doesn't age as well as ceramic or porcelain. Anna and I joked that bronze is how we'll age unless we start using amazing lotions and potions now. By the way, I've used sun screen and lotion on my face every day we've been here in attempts to curb that, considering I'm pushing 30 and all.The last exhibit was the Maori exhibit. It was a bit disorienting to be looking at New Zealand aboriginal artifacts in China, but I guess it shouldn't be any more odd than looking at Egyptian artifacts in Chicago. Shanghai has a sister-city relationship with a city in New Zealand, so it makes even more sense. It also made me wish I'd gone to New Zealand on my Australia trip, but I guess that just means another trip down under will be in order.

From there we look the MRT to Pudong, the tall skyline we saw from the other side of the river a couple nights before. Pudong is Shanghai's financial district and home to the Oriental Pearl Tower. We opted out of the view from the top and chose the History Museum closer to ground level. But, before that we took a short circle bus tour around the district. On that tour I felt like I was in china less and less. If the language was changed it could have been any huge city. We passed the Yacht Club and the most expensive housing in the city as well as the two tallest buildings, one of which we've been called the giant bottle opener. The Shanghai History Museum took us from early Shanghai where farmers were working the land (the sign told us to look at fun ways people worked with the land, but their faces were more like grimaces than smirks) to the Opium War invasion to the middle of the 20th century when foreigners were setting up colony type settlements throughout Shanghai. Some exhibits were like old time street displays, which I love. You can insert yourself into a bar scene or beauty shop of yesteryear with the snap of a camera.

From there it was back into the sauna. The financial district has a raised round about type sidewalk so pedestrians don't have to worry about getting sideswiped. And in Shanghai it was a welcome safety feature considering the traffic. We stopped in the Apple store and then went for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the mall. It was better than most mall restaurants back home, and had great cheese (a rarity in China). We took the sightseeing tunnel back across the river. I was really hoping for a willy wonks type off crazy boat ride, but it didn't quite deliver. The best explanation may be the inside of the gravatron minus the zero-g effect. Not super impressive, and a little over priced. So, after shaking the disappointment we headed home for what is becoming our Chinese nightly tradition of Reeb (yes that's beer backwards, and it's quite tastey) and tv.

Not exactly Willy Wonka...

Day 5 (Thursday) - Shanghai/Beijing
We grabbed a taxi to the train station early enough to have breakfast at McDonalds. I was glad Lei Ti was able to order my sausage Egg McMuffin without the sausage. Full of greasy goodness we shuffled through the line to the High Speed Rail. In China it has seemed less like lines and more like masses of people pushing their way closer to where they want to go. I was a little afraid to board considering the HSR crash earlier that week that killed 35 people when one train rear-ended a train that was stopped from a storm. But I kept reminding myself that it wasn't the same route, but what i kept remembering was that it was the same type of train. But, needless to say, we made it safely to Beijing 5 hours later. The regular train takes somewhere between 10 and 15 hours and there were no soft seats available, so I guess the nerves were worth the time saved. Once we figured out the new MRT we started our search for a hotel. We started out at a the MRT stop close to the famous Peking Duck place we ended up at later that night. We should have known by the name that "Rich Hotel" that it was on the pricey side, so we kept going, and going and going. The next hotel we came across couldn't accept foreigners (hotels in China need a license to host foreign travelers). We decided to ask a taxi driver if he knew where a close/cheap hotel was, but he was no help. The bicycle taxis knew the way. Anna and I hoped into one with one of our bags and Lei Ti took the others in the second bici taxi. I could never ride a bicycle on Beijing streets, let alone be a bicycle taxi driver. It's not just the actual peddling (our driver's bike was motorized), but the traffic is insane. They took us to what would eventually be our hotel for three nights. We dropped off our bags and went back out to find the famous Peking Duck place from Lei Ti's book. It was so popular that there was a wait, we picked up our number and waited on the small blue stools with everyone else.

Everyone waiting for duck.

I was concerned at first that I was underdressed considering I was wearing yoga pants to be comfy on the train, but then someone hauked a logie next to me and I felt better about it. The restaurant was more than 100 years old and has hosted dignitaries like the korea's Kim Jong-il, leaders from Kenya, Iran and the United Arab Emerites. Anna and Lei Ti order a half duck and ate the meat rolled up in a thin pancake like dough with duck sauce and scallions.

The famous, salty duck

I had fried tofu and white rice. They said the duck was worth the hype, a little salty like everything we've eaten in China, but pretty good. The tofu though, not so much. I could have been ok with just the rice. The tofu was too soft and wasn't cooked with any flavor. Dipping it in the duck sauce helped the flavor, but the texture couldn't be masked. We walked back to our hotel, not a short walk by any stretch of the imagination. Along the path home we walked down "old street," which is the street leading up to Tianamen square lined with stores like H&M, Starbucks and Haagen Das.

This was off on a side street off of "old street." A replica Taiwan night market,
but a bad one with nothing really going on except a little music.

The only way to cross from our hotel and to old street is to go up and over a bridge about a block out of the way. It seems so close, but yet so far. That's how it all seems in Bejing, on the map it looks like a block or two, in reality its a mile. Beijing is huge!