No Lions, No Tigers... No Bears... Oh My!

On Saturday night we went to the Shanghai Circus World and got some nose bleed seats for about $15 each. We showed up early and we weren't sure it was going to fill up, but by about 5 minutes after the show started, almost all the seats in the arena were filled. This was a little surprising because this circus performs every single day of the week, so this wasn't a limited engagement. I guess when you're located off a metro line in a city of 23 million people, there's always someone who hasn't seen your show. 

The show started with this ring of one way mirrors that had acrobats dancing inside. We didn't manage to get any pictures of the girls who would do flexibility performances, but it was pretty impressive. These girls were bending the feet over their heads and then stacking themselves 4 high to produce shadow puppets.

Next, a group of male acrobats came on stage and did some flips through hoops and some spring board tricks. Show below is a man preparing to be launched off of a see-saw onto a chair on a pole held by a man who himself was standing on a pole held by another man. 

 The next act up was a man and woman who performed a dance with two sheets of fabric hanging from the ceiling. They would wrap their limbs and then swing through the air. They would often hold onto each other and sometimes they would just hang on each other's legs as the spun around the stage.

The final performance was a motorcycle troupe. The theme of the circus was performances through the ages. Each motorcycle rider was wearing old Chinese armor from ancient times. They began with one man riding around a steel cage shaped like a globe.

And then they added 2 more.

And by the end of it they had 8 bikes inside that little cage. Shown below are all of them after they left the globe.

The circus was great and we would highly recommend it to anyone in Shanghai. We were glad to not see any abused animals or too-young child performers. It was clear that everyone involved was extremely skilled and had probably devoted most of their lives to the circus. There were even safety harnesses used for some of the riskier performances. China has lived up to most international standards since our arrival, and for that we are glad.

The Jade Buddha Temple.. I don't see any jade..

On Saturday we went in search of the Jade Buddha Temple, which we found on our map. We looked it up online and saw that it housed a few Buddha statues made out of real jade, so we thought it would be pretty cool. We hopped on the train and got off at the nearest station and then walked around. Usually for bigger sites, there are signs around pointing us dumb tourists in the right direction, but for this temple there were none. We saw this as a sign that maybe it wasn't so touristy and we would get to see something special. When we finally found it, we saw hoards of Chinese people lining up to go in, and as we waited in line for our tickets we were bombarded with beggars who obviously knew where to go to find a crowd. Once we were inside, we saw a huge crowd of people praying everywhere, which we figured must be because of the closeness of the New Year. When we walked around it was still pretty cool with all of the ornate buildings and statues, but it was all very commercial and we couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of jade. You had to pay to see the bigger statues and to basically do anything but walk around. 

Decked out for the New Year.

Cool statue thing made up of a bunch of tiny different Buddhas.

This picture won't flip, but it's one of only two jade Buddhas we saw in the temple.. the other one had a no pictures allowed sign in front of it.

After visiting the temple, we walked back to the train station through a park filled with cool statues. Here's a few pictures of the cooler ones.

It looked like such a treacherous journey for all of them.. what you don't see is the path I was standing on that they could've just taken.

Random Blog Post 1

We felt like we hadn't posted anything in a while (mostly because it's been a largely uneventful week) and we are in the process of memorizing hundreds of Chinese characters for our final, so we decided to post some of our random pictures from the past few weeks that haven't related to anything else. 

Not really sure why the pictures won't move to the center, so you'll have to forgive me for the formatting.

FOOD

These are the street noodles that we get outside the gates of the University for 6 Yuan ($1). 

These were found in a grocery store.. one of my favorite English candies.

For when you need both orange juice and pepsi with your meal (not an uncommon thing here where very few people drink water).

A type of restaurant style called hot pot. They give you a pot of broth and all the raw ingredients and you cook it all and eat it out of your pot. It's very tasty and has good ingredients, but is also a hassle to have to cook your own food (not exactly the reason you go out to eat).

One of the meals from the dining court that we call a "sizzling plate". It consists of rice, meat, peppers and onions with a sauce over it that sizzles when they put it on the hot plate. It comes with egg and tomato soup which is a favorite among the group. All this costs 10 Yuan ($1.50).

Freshly pulled noodles from the dining court. As you wait for your plate to be made, you can watch them pull the noodles from a ball of dough. 

Joe's new favorite type of chips - numb and spicy hot pot flavor (kind of like barbeque with a kick).

Love these little panda cookies (these were Joe's, for those of you who know me, you'll know I only ever get the chocolate kind).

Weird individually wrapped potato crackers with a blatant rip off of the pringles dude on the front. 

No matter where you go, there's always a McDonald's. We haven't caved yet, but most of the group has. 

A store dedicated to selling milk since it's not widely consumed  here.

A Hersheys chocolate store in People's Square- always packed with people.

PEOPLE

Joe messing around on the subway.

Me at the wet market looking great as always.

Joe got a little sleepy on one of our bus rides. This one wasn't as good as when he was drooling, but unfortunately I didn't snap a picture of that. 

SJTU Graduates celebrating on the lawns outside of the school. 

Little kid outside of the Shanghai museum posing for a picture.

Things get a little weird in our hotel rooms when we have to memorize Chinese or read a whole bunch of Chinese history....

OTHER

Shaq on a beer ad.

  

This is a tounge twister we learned in Chinese class. We all had to go around the room and say the whole thing. If it looks like all of the "si" and "shi" words sound the same, we would say you were right, but our teacher would disagree. The joys of learning a tonal language. 

Snapped a picture of the company my mom works for while in the industrial park looking for the company we were visiting.

This is a hot water bottle I bought for my knee. You can't see it clearly, but the packaging actually says "flot water bottle"- a combination of "flat water bottle" and "hot water bottle"?

Cool lantern in a temple decorated for new years.

Love this guy's grin around the brass door knocker.  

Live shark embryos at the aquarium. They show the fetuses at different stages of development and you can see them all moving around in there.

This guy's eyes are on hands in his eye sockets. Not really sure what old Chinese guy came up with this one. 

Statue at one of the temples we went to - a hugely muscular warrior and his beasts.

Couldn't help but take a picture of the head-to-body ratio of this stuffed animal.

Anyway, we hope you enjoyed that random little collection of pictures that we've picked up along the way. Hopefully we'll have a more exciting weekend to blog about in a few days.