Shanghai Nights

This is what is on my mind right now:

For the first time since 1978, Calvin College has a snow day tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That felt good. And now to our regular programming...

Welcome back to the tales of Interim 2011: Chinese Medicine Edition. Last I checked, you had all booked tickets to Milan for Expo 2015. Good for you!

Now here's the deal with our time in Shanghai. We were there for two weekends, with an entire week stuck there in the middle. The weekends were used for fun excursion-type shenanigans, but that Monday through Friday in the middle there (Jan. 10 to 14) -- that was used for our Traditional Chinese Medicine class (hereafter referred to as TCM). All of our learning about yin and yang, all that acupuncture, and all of that exposure to the smelly practice of moxibustion -- it all deserves its very own special post, which will be written soon. But tonight I wanted to write about this first -- a few of the ways I found to pass the time for dinner and beyond. I think a numbered list is in order!

Top Three Things To Do in Shanghai When You Are Not In TCM Class

1) Hot Pot

Hot Pot is awesome.

Since that explains how I feel, but it really tells you nothing about hot pot, I will turn to my dear friend Wikipedia, which can explain it better than I ever could.

"Hot pot (Chinese: 火鍋; pinyin: huǒ guō), less commonly Chinese fondue or steamboat, refers to several East Asian varieties of stew, consisting of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce. In many areas, hot pot meals are often eaten in the winter."

That pretty much sums it up. I went to a hot pot restaurant once in Shanghai (pictured above) and -- break in the chronology! break in the chronology! -- once in Beijing. Like fondue, hot pot is a wonderfully interactive experience that involves a pot sitting on your table. Unlike fondue, hot pot does not use strange little forks, nor does it have anything to do with cheese. Mostly there are a lot of meats and vegetables.

An action shot of hot pot:

The thing to watch out for with hot pot -- the food is, what a surprise, VERY HOT when you pull it out of the boiling broth to eat it. Also, you can order it to be pretty spicy. So I guess it can be hot in that way as well. Hmm.
When we went to this hot pot restaurant in Shanghai, Prof. Shen came with us and ordered our food before leaving (She said she didn't like hot pot -- how not??). This was probably a great thing, because a few other people in our group later went to a hot pot restaurant on their own and ordered randomly...and then were brought chicken feet. But we did have our share of language barriers during our time at the restaurant. Dan tried to use his trusty phrasebook to order something to drink after Shen left, and the waitstaff did not understand or chose to ignore him. The teenagers (or older? I am bad at judging ages) sitting across from us found the exchange (or us) quite hilarious. They kept talking about us, and Robbie (who knows a decent amount of Chinese) said "They are making fun of our big noses."

So, yeah. There's that.

I still heartily recommend hot pot with all my heart.

2) Nanjing Road

Let's take a moment to admire some pictures of Nanjing Road, shall we?

By night, Nanjing Road has it all: bright lights, great shopping, and delicious restaurants and food stands. Plus the road is a pedestrian road only, which means the dangers usually associated with walking across the street in Shanghai traffic are greatly reduced. Nanjing Road is where it's at, guys. I went there at night three times. I could have gone there even more.

What, you are still not convinced that Nanjing Road is the coolest of cool, the greatest of great, even more amazing than a Calvin College snow day? Well, consider this -- Nanjing Road has groups spontaneously ballroom dancing on the street, and members of these groups have been known to spontaneously pull unsuspecting Americans into their circle to dance.

Did this happen? Yes, of course. It happened to Julie:

After she danced with the cute old man, she was asked to dance by ANOTHER member of the dancing gang. And after that when we went into a store, the store clerks recognized her and one made dancing motions with his arms. Fame.

3) The Bund

What can be more amazing than Nanjing Road by night?

You know, I am surprised that you ask so many questions. Luckily, I always have an answer.

Answer: The Bund!

But although The Bund is pretty, historic, and European-looking, we don't go to The Bund to look at The Bund, do we? No, we don't.

We go there for this:

The Pudong District, the Place-across-the-river, the Shanghai Skyline, the Wow-that-was-all-built-in-the-past-twenty-years? area, the Land of Lights and Wonder. And those are just my names for it.

Side note: would you like to see some crazy skyline pictures? It will make the picture above even more extreme.

The top picture is Shanghai in 1990; the bottom, Shanghai in 2010.

Oh, and a new building called the Shanghai Tower is going to be built next. It will dwarf the World Financial Center, which I can say from experience is pretty stinkin' tall on its own.

What I am trying to say with all of this:

The Shanghai skyline doesn't mess around. Especially not at night.

Are you convinced yet that you need to go to Shanghai and never sleep, just enjoy the city all night long?

Good.

THE EXPO! (Part 2), and How Have We Not Talked About Haibo Yet?

Did you read Part 1 about the Expo? No? Go read that first!

Ok, for those of you who are doing this correctly, you may proceed with reading.

The big question of the post is, what were the National TreasureS that were waiting for us at the end of a long line in the China Pavilion? Well...



















It was not so much National TreasureS as it was a national treasure. Only one. Sure, it was a chariot/horses thing from THE terracotta army of terracotta fame, and since we did not go to see the terracotta army (they are about as far from Shanghai as Seattle is from Los Angeles), it was nice to see something from that set.

But really, China?! National TreasureS implies, you know, many treasures. Treasures is plural. And so I was expecting to be dazzled by the quantity of treasure found in that tiny exhibit, not to have to make excuses like, well maybe they counted each horse individually.

This was the one downer of the Expo, folks, so please let me have my moment. I promise that the rest of the China pavilion was ten thousand kinds of fantastic.

National TreasureS!!

Okay, the moment has passed. Fortunately the disappointing treasure exhibit was surrounded by the amazing River of Wisdom. Did I fully explain this yesterday? So the screen that the animation was projected on was over twenty feet high, and 420 feet long. Yes. 420 feet. WOW. It wrapped around the inside of the building a bit, so don't worry too much about how it fit in there. But still.

Is the China pavilion fully sinking in yet, guys? First we had an epic movie, then a giant animated river. WHAT WILL BE NEXT?

This is exactly what I began asking myself. Well, to finish "Highlight 1: The Footprints," we had to walk through a few electric forests like the Land of Hope



















(I am not sure about the intended educational value of the Land of Hope)

And then this blue area



















I think it was supposed to look like a bamboo forest? Maybe?

Right. So that was it for the first area, now on to area 2, known as The Dialogue. What is The Dialogue, you may ask? As a sign so nicely pointed out to me, The Dialogue is a dialogue "between past and present" that focuses on four areas: paradigm, access, tectonics, and poetics.

???

I didn't get it, either. Paradigm, access, tectonics, poetics? Hmm. Maybe The Dialogue would explain it all.

Funny thing is, The Dialogue had no words at all. Funny thing is, The Dialogue turned out to be a RIDE, much like It's a Small World After All at Disneyland. Except without any words, of course.

It was a quarter to five when Tara, Julie, and I got in line for "The Dialogue" (the ride), so I was slightly worried that we wouldn't get to go.



















Then, right when we got to the very front of the line and were about to go on, the car that pulled up was out of order. Wouldn't you know. It was actually pretty funny.



















But then, look at that, the next car was not out of order, and we were whisked away onto the ride. I took a short video at the beginning of the ride -- it shows the cartoon-ish splendor that was The Dialogue. Oh, and at the end of the video you can hear a bit of the rousing song that was played all. throughout. the. Expo. That song was stuck in my head for the rest of the day, and you should consider yourselves lucky that you only have to hear this much of it!



Now tell me, did you get tectonics out of that? Because I was beginning to feel poetics, maybe even paradigm, but tectonics still escapes me. And don't get me started on access...

Right, on to section 3. This section was all about THE FUTURE and ideas for THE FUTURE. It featured cars of THE FUTURE



















and a waterfall of THE FUTURE, because the waterfall was spelling Chinese characters using the absence of water to spell them! Okay, maybe the picture will explain it better:



















Do you see them, the characters spelled by the empty spaces? 'Twas fantastic. Area 3 was all together pretty cool, but sort of futuristic/educational.

After that we descended down a very looooooong escalator and ended up underneath the center of the pavilion, where it was freezing cold.



















But I couldn't tell that it was cold; I needed this sign to tell me. What a helpful little sign!




















The next order of business was, of course, to leave the pavilion, and let's talk about that for a second. So you can buy Expo memorabilia in the gift shop for more expensive prices, or you can buy the cheaper, less durable version from people on the street outside the Expo. These people are very insistent that you buy their cheap products. When we got off the metro to go to the Expo, several vendor boys were walking DOWN the UP escalator to try sell us discounted tickets. So yeah, pretty insistent. Anyway, back to leaving the Expo. There is only one exit from the pavilion, and it involves going through a tiny gate. Guess who all were waiting on the other side of the gate?













Replace the paparazzi in that photo with vendors, and the cameras with Expo merchandise, and you have a pretty good idea what leaving the gate was like. Celebrities, I feel your pain. Being crushed by mobs is difficult. Most of us made it out of the swarm unharmed, but one person in our group stopped to buy something. Guess who it was?

No, not me. It was Prof. Shen. She was suckered into buying a bunch of Haibo keychains, which she distributed randomly among our group, and I was lucky enough to get one. Speaking of Haibo...

How Have We Not Talked About Haibo Yet?

Let me introduce you. Meet Haibo, World Expo Mascot Extraordinaire



















Haibo is everywhere in Shanghai--no, make that China. Haibo is everywhere in China. Here is Haibo in a child's painting at the exhibition:



















Here is Becca with Haibo in a completely different city, Jiaxing:



















And here is a store on Nanjing Road full of Haibo merchandise. Do you see alllllll the plush Haibos lined up along the top shelves? Wisely bought at least two of varying sizes. People also purchased t-shirts, mugs, passport cases, and who knows what else. I got a pencil case!






















Not only was Haibo everywhere, Haibo was good for everything. Examples:
-When toasting, replace the traditional "cheers" with "Haibo"
-When playing the game B.S., replace calling someone's b.s. with calling out "Haibo"
-When taking pictures, instead of "cheese," say "Haibo"

And many more! As you can see, Haibo has many uses, both functionally and inspirationally. You could argue that Haibo was the best part of the Expo.

Oh, Haibo.














And THAT was our small taste of the Expo, my friends. It was futuristic, it was educational. It was full of traditional and modern Chinese architecture. It had movies, rides, and cartoon characters.

Does anyone else get the feeling that we were at Epcot in Orlando???

Ah well. Similarities aside, it was still an amazing place. If I had known how amazing, I would have wanted to go to the complete Expo last year! After a little research, I've decided that there's only one thing to do: Who wants to go with me to Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy?!

I knew you would.

A Church, A Cathedral, and THE EXPO! (Part I)

Ok, everyone. The last I checked, I left you hanging at about January 9 with the recaps of our trip. That was a long time ago! But it also feels like yesterday, which I guess is a good sign because then I might be able to do the story justice.

January 9...

Let me take you back, oh not so very long ago, when twenty Calvin students, their professor, and that other person who went on the trip with them had only been in China for two days. Some of them were not very good at chopsticks yet. Some of them had not yet tried Boba Tea. Oh, what a strange time that must have been! Yes, yes it was. January 9 ... it was a Sunday.

Naturally, the first thing we did that day was go to church.


















That is at the Shanghai Community Fellowship Church in Hengshan (thank you, Google!). The church was very, very crowded and we got some of the last seats in the balcony (We took pictures down below after the service was over). The church had a helpful feature called "spontaneous translation." We got to wear headphones while the service was talking place, while someone translated what was going on into English so we could follow along with the prayers, sermon, etc. I say this was a helpful feature because there is no way I would have understood as much as I did without the headphones, so I am thankful for that. However, it was also kind of weird to be wearing (giant) headphones in church. It made me feel like I wasn't very much a part of things, but I guess as a non-Chinese speaker, that would always be the case for me, headphones or not.

Anyway, anyway.

Funny story: When the service was over, a nice man from the church came up and asked our group (in English) if we would like an information packet and a tour of the church. We agreed! So he went off to get the brochures. Eventually he came back, he handed them out, started to walk away, and then we all followed him.

He turned around. "Do you have any questions?"

Nope! we said.

He looked confused, and kept walking away. We kept following.

He turned around again. "Why are you following me?"

Turns out this "tour" he was going to lead us on was a misunderstanding, and he had really been referring to only the info packets. Whoops. I hope we didn't scare him too much when he turned around and saw that all the American students were following him!

Ha, ha, ha. Ha. Yeah, okay.

Church was lovely. Here's some more people at it:





















Yay church!

There was nothing to do afterwards but go to another one. We walked and walked through the streets of Shanghai to get to the Catholic Cathedral of Shanghai, St. Ignatius'. But we ended up here on the way there, which was an intersection with a mega-mall on every side:




















Of course we had to eat lunch before going to the cathedral, so our group went its separate ways to find food. Many of us ended up in a restaurant of the Chinese fast food chain, Kung Fu. Now, the logo of this restaurant is so rockin' that I must share it with you:

















Aw yeah. And the food was FAST, too. They promise that your food will be ready in 45 seconds or less, and they lived up to that promise. Because they move with the speed of kung fu fighters, of course.

After lunch we went over to the cathedral because we thought the tours were starting at 1:30, but it turned out that they did not start until 2:00. What were we going to do with all that time? Well, we explored the alley behind the church a little...and then, somehow, I don't remember now how we did it, we convinced Prof. Shen to give us lessons in taiji (tai chi).

















Yes, we were as good as that man pictured there. You don't believe me? Then watch this video:




Hey, we learned quickly, okay? And we did continue practicing these moves throughout the rest of the trip.
It was crazy. It was fun. It was awesome. I mean, here I was, doing taiji in an alley in Shanghai. Who would have thought?

We then went on a tour of the cathedral. Here is a group picture of everyone in front of it! (Photo from Prof. Shen's camera).

























The tour of the cathedral was slightly fascinating. The tour guide gave the tour in Chinese, and Shen would translate the gist of the message for us, which was all we needed. There were about forty other people on the tour with us, so we tended to hover near the back. We assume now that the people in this tour group, or at least most people who go on tours of the cathedral, had/have little to no background knowledge of Christianity, because the tour guide started the tour at the very beginning. "She's talking about Adam and Eve," Shen told us. Then we moved on to the Lord's Supper, then Baptism. It was interesting that the people in China have such a different background than the U.S. does, religion aside. I feel like even secular people in the U.S. would know at least the basics about the stories?

Anyway, it was interesting to note, but we were running out of time. We had to make it to the Expo before 5:00. So when the tour group moved over to a nativity scene ("Is she explaining Christmas, Prof. Shen?" "Yes."), we made our break for it. I don't think the tour guide even noticed. We were off to the Expo.

THE EXPO!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so the full name is Expo 2010 Shanghai China, and the Expo was officially held last year from May until October. Think of it as the World's Fair for the modern age. Countries were invited to come and present their ideas about cities of the future...and to show off. But I don't think any country showed off more than China. Here's some numbers
-250 countries participated
-73 million people visited
-It cost billions of dollars. Wikipedia is not even sure how many.

Thanks to the Expo, Shanghai had six lovely new subway lines for us to ride, four thousand new Volkswagen taxis for us to marvel at, and security checkpoints at the entrance of each metro station for us to grumble about.

So the Expo was a grand thing. WAS. It was over in October, and countries tore their pavilions down and went home...








Except for China! They are keeping the China pavilion open until at least May of this year, and so, for one afternoon, we got to go to the Expo!





















That picture does not do the China pavilion justice. I know, Obama figurine is in it, but still. Here's a better one:




















We did not have to wait in line for hours and hours like many people did during the actual Expo, but we did get to make our way through a twisty and turn-y line to get into the exhibits. It was a lot like Disneyland. Then, once we got inside, we waited in front of some closed doors for what felt like for-ev-er. It was probably about fifteen minutes, but when the same light-display on the doors is looped every two minutes, it feels like much longer. Finally the doors opened up, and we entered a theater big enough and with technology great enough to make the Abraham Lincoln Museum jealous.

And then they played an epic film about China, people, and the working class (all hail the working class!). Would you like to see some of it?



Did you see the steel workers at the end? Did you feel a little bit more communist inside? I kid, I kid. But only slightly.
Overall, the movie was very, very cool. At one point in the movie fireworks were going off, and they "exploded" on a screen above our heads. Even better, the Expo people did not seem to be enforcing the "no photography" policy, so I and everyone else in the theater with me could take videos like that one to share with the world! Yes, I do still like to question authority...but I am safer about it now.

When the movie was finished, we were off to the "River of Wisdom."



Apparently the animation, which switched back and forth between 2D and 3D, was based on a famous painting from yester-year in China. Cool.

Also in the same hall as the River of Wisdom was this:





















Now, I don't know what you thought when you first saw that, but my first thought was, "National Treasures! How awesome will this be?!" Because if America's National Treasure was amazing enough for Nicholas Cage to go on a quest to find, then China's National TreasureS must be spectacular. I mean, right? So a few of us waited in a significantly long line to see what this National TreasureS thing was all about...

...to be continued, since it is time to go to bed. Ha, you will have to wait to find out what the National TreasureS are! See, wasn't it worth the wait for all of these pictures and videos and such? I thought so.

Let's get this going again!

Hi again! Wow, this blogging thing has been very confusing. So far I have:
-switched from Blogspot to Travellerspoint because Blogspot doesn't work in China
-switched from Travellerspoint to Weebly because Travellerspoint doesn't upload photos in China
-updated my Weebly blog very, very rarely because the internet in China was slow, and because I didn't have time to wait for it
-switched BACK to my tried-and-true Blogspot blog because guess what?! Weebly makes you PAY if you want to upload videos! I know, I was outraged, too. Which is why I made the final decision to switch back to this blog, where videos and pictures exist in perfect, free harmony.

SO if you would like to read the pathetically-few blog entries that I wrote while in China, I will leave them up in a permanent archive at acupofdutch.weebly.com

BUT I will also start from nearly the beginning in sharing my adventures here, and I promise, promise, promise that, starting today, you will get a new post every day until I am finished. I am ready for this blogging thing to happen successfully once and for all! Enough switching, enough slow uploading of photos, enough paying for videos, enough! It took until now for things to become this awesome, but awesome they will be.

Okay, I am putting this up in order to start on another post. Happy reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy it, at least a little. I know it is less exciting to read a blog about something that already happened instead of something that is currently happening, but what can you do. I will try my best with what I've still got -- and with 1137 pictures of the trip, I think I've still got a lot.

-Katie

P.S. This is the first day since we got back that I have managed to stay awake all afternoon! Jet lag, be gone!