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.
No comments:
Post a Comment