So Long Shanghai! (Joe's Birthday)

With our last weekend in China, we headed into the city to celebrate Joe's birthday early. We went to the fake markets one last time to replace the wallet that I had lost/was taken on the subway a couple of weeks ago. We picked up our last Chinese knockoffs and then went to dinner. We decided to go to recreate one of our favorite meals in China, the duck we had in Beijing. The famous restaurant we went to with our moms had a location right by the fake markets, so we couldn't resist. The duck wasn't quite as good or fresh as it was in Beijing, but we still really enjoyed the meal and even remembered to take a picture this time! You are given the duck meat, sauce, cucumbers, scallions and pancakes all separately and basically get to make your own mini duck taco which is delicious!

 After dinner, we went into the heart of Shanghai to go up to the tallest observatory in the world, the top of the World Financial Center, or "bottle opener building" as it is known because it looks just like a big bottle opener. We went up to the 100th floor, which is at the very top of the square opening and is a glass walkway so you can see down to the people below you and you can see the whole city, including the lit up boats along the river, the Pearl Tower and old English area called the Bund across the river. We really enjoyed going up there, though it was hard to get good pictures due to all of the bright lights on the buildings.

The building we went up!

This model was in the bottom of the building so you can see where you are situated before you go up.

All of the sides had glass panels on the floors so you could see down too.. it freaked me out at first!

Contemplating life 1500 feet above the ground

A new skyscraper that they are building right next to the building we were in, they were welding up there at 8pm!

Pearl Tower with rainbow lights

Glass panels in the floor of the top deck so you could see the people below

Amazing view of an amazing city!

Once we were back on ground level, we headed across the river to our hostel in Shanghai for the night. The room was great and had a loft with the bed which was cool, though we had some obnoxious tourists next to us who forced us to nag them to turn off their music late into the night. In the morning, we went back to one of our favorite areas for brunch at an all day pancake place that we've wanted to go to and both got "big breakfasts" which included 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, bacon, sausage and ham all for less than $10! One of the things we'll miss about China is just how cheap everything is! We then made one final stop at the DVD store (where every DVD is $2) to pick up some last minute souvenirs and did the hour and a half trip back to campus for the last time! We now have 2 days until our flight leaves for Chicago (as I write this, it is 47 hours until departure, not that I'm counting)!

So We're Not Going To The Mountain?

This past weekend, we went on a school sponsored trip to Huangshan, which is known to many as Yellow Mountain. We went prepared to hike another mountain, and after a 6 hour bus ride, we found out that the plan had changed and they had decided not to go on the mountain, so we were taken around the city of Huangshan instead. For a good part of the bus ride, the tour guide was at the front giving the history of the area and the mountain, but it was all in Chinese despite the fact that the majority of the 40 people on our bus couldn't speak Chinese. So, we got on and off the bus when we were told and had people translate how long we had at each place for us. It was definitely an interesting adventure to not have any idea where you were. We started at an old house of a rich person that was full of gardens and awesome architecture which we really liked. All Joe kept saying was that he wanted to live there. We had beautiful weather (around 85 F) which was great for walking around in our hiking clothes.

Entrance to the house area

Cool old wooden architecture - no screws or bolts used.

We really liked these carved doors and windows that were everywhere

and these cool shaped windows

We found a mini mountain to hike (a collection of rocks)!

Look Mom, I did it!

Joe made it all the way to the top!

Trying to push the stone ball but I wasn't strong enough.

After the house, we went to an ancient little town that was on a river. There was some cool scenery and lots of young people sitting around drawing or painting the scenes. We wandered around for an hour or so and then hopped back on the bus.

This guy was on our trip.. and I thought I stood out.

That night, we stayed in a hotel that was included in our trip fee and the next morning we woke up early and went on a boat ride on a huge river. We stopped at a couple of different villages, but mostly just sat out in the sun on the top of the boat for a few hours. 

This sign was on the boat.. gotta love Chinese translations!

This was a 1000 year old tree that had a fake tree friend to hold up the sagging branches.

Overall, it was different than we expected the trip to be in that we didn't see the mountain and we couldn't understand what was happening the whole time, but we had only paid $30 for it and that included the bus trip, the food and the hotel for the night so we really couldn't complain.

As of right now, that concludes all of our traveling since we are running out of money and traveling is exhausting. We have really loved every trip we did and covered everything that we wanted to, so now we are going to spend our last 4 weeks doing some final things in Shanghai and preparing to come home!

Parks, Temples and Pizza Hut

Chengdu Trip - Walking around the City

After coming back to Chengdu a day earlier, we needed something to keep us busy for the 2 days until our flight, so we set out walking around the city and seeing all the attractions on the map that our hostel gave us. We woke up Friday morning and I couldn't put weight on my legs for at least 20 minutes because they were so sore from the mountain and we didn't even hike the whole thing! Once we could walk again, we got breakfast and headed to our first stop - the biggest Mao statue in China. It was cool monument, but there wasn't really anything to do there other than look at it and take pictures.

We then headed over to People's Park, a cool park filled with old ladies doing their Tai Chi and a kids amusement park (both staples of Chinese parks).

SO GREEN!

From there, we headed to "China Lane", a souvenir street filled with panda stores and old style buildings and restaurants. We really liked the area and walked around the whole thing, getting sandwiches from Starbucks for lunch! I also was able to get some postcards and Joe got a map like the ones he's been collecting from every city we've visited. 

There was some cool wall art like this one, where part of it was painted and part was coming out of the wall!

Can't get away from them!

Joe was having fun with his camera taking pictures of me..

Weird name for a coffee shop and pub, but OK

After some shopping, we headed to yet another park called the Culture Park, where we knew there was a huge Taoist Temple nearby. It took us forever to find the temple, but walking through the area was cool and the park was beautiful again.

Kids bottle feeding some fish, a sight I'd never seen before!

An old style street by the temple.

No temple visit is complete without some statue pics!

People on a tour walking across the middle of the yin-yang on the floor.. not really sure what the significance was.

Part of the temple was lined with Monkey statues, which we had to take pictures of seeing as we were both born in the year of the monkey!

After the temple, we both couldn't walk anymore and our backs were killing us from carrying around our backpacks, so we headed to our original Chengdu hostel where we had reservations for the night. We took a nap and then went to a free dumpling party put on by the hostel where we made fun shaped dumplings with the other guests, some of whom were children travelling with their families which was fun. Joe and I both won a "most creative" dumpling contest with his face-shaped one and my rabbit dumpling. After that, we walked around the pedestrian area by our hostel and ate some popcorn that we bought from a movie theater - dinner of champions.

The next day, we woke up and went to a bamboo park which was really cool and as you can imagine, filled with all different kinds of bamboo. It was definitely my favorite park that we went to and we had great weather for walking around!

The bamboo was so thick!

A lady drawing the bamboo.. living the life!

Crazy walkway full of curved trees.

Posing like a Chinese girl

Even Chinese grannies get in on the posing!

A lot of the bamboo was carved with Chinese and people's names, so we decided to contribute too!

A typical sight in China - a girl dressed up as an anime character.

After the bamboo park, we headed to a shopping mall for lunch and ended up at Pizza Hut, one of the few western restaurants we hadn't been to before. It only had 1 page of pizza in the whole menu which was surprising, but the pizza was exactly what we needed after the long week we'd had. 

FEED ME!

What? A sign by where we were walking.

After lunch, we headed to our last tourist destination, a monastery and temple area which was again surrounded by a park. We got to see some nuns and monks chanting which was cool and something we hadn't seen at the other temples before. By the time we had walked through the area, we were exhausted and went back to our hostel to relax for the rest of the day and wait for our flight that night.

This boy was walking his dog around like this, holding onto his paws behind his back - it made for a pretty funny sight.

The temple inside the monastery where they were all chanting.

Joe and a statue of an animal made up of many different real and mythical beasts.

Overall, we really enjoyed Chengdu as a city. It was very modern, well organized and clean. Out of the cities we've been to, it has been our favorite by far next to Shanghai. There was little pollution in the area and so many different places to go and see!