Shanghai

First of all, the food was heavenly! We recognized the dishes and chowed down in silence every time since we were enjoying the food so much. They served us stuff like kung pao chicken, sweet and sour pork, orange chicken, Mongolian beef, etc.

We started off by visiting the Yu Garden, which was beautiful! The garden was definitely one of my favorites sights in Shanghai not only because the garden was beautiful and landscaped in the traditional Chinese style, but also because they had a Dairy Queen in the market that surrounded the garden! So I totally bought an Oreo blizzard!

Then we went to the Bund, or the waterfront to see the skyline in the daytime. We later went back and took a nighttime cruise on the river to see the city’s skyline at night. It was beautiful at both times! It’s crazy that the entire city is built on the silt brought in by the Yangtze (Yellow) River since its delta is nearby. In fact, the silt is kind of taking its toll since there is at least one building on the Bund that is leaning to one side. And even on that silt, they are currently building the Shanghai Tower that will be the tallest building in the world!

We also went to an amazing acrobat show. Everyone should go to an acrobat show! Then to the Jade Buddha Temple, the Pearl TV Tower, the French concession area, and then the Shanghai Museum – that had some pretty cool ceramics and jade carvings. We also visited the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai. Did you know that Shanghai was among the last city to accept Jewish refugees fleeing from Europe during World War II? The city accepted at least 23,000 refugees. But then the Japanese occupied Shanghai and gathered up Jews into the ghetto we saw.

acrobats on a bike

ceramics at the Shanghai Museum

the French concession

Jade Buddha temple

sitting on glass in the Pearl TV Tower

the Pearl TV Tower. I was up in the second ball.

Jewish Ghetto

laundry drying on the street in the Jewish Ghetto

Our flight out of Shanghai. Ugh. That was terrible. A typhoon was actually due to hit Taiwan and kind of Xiamen that day, and we had been praying that our flight would be canceled before we left for the airport so we could stay in the nice hotel one more night, but it wasn’t to be. Dang China Eastern Airlines said our flight was still scheduled to leave on time. So we drove out to the airport. And got to our gate by 2:00 PM. Our scheduled departure time (4:15 PM) came and went with no boarding and no announcements. I finally went up to the gate desk and asked about our flight, and they said it was delayed with no new estimated departure time. So we sat and waited some more. Then at 9:30 PM they told us to line up for boarding. We boarded our plane at 10:00 PM. Then we sat again, on the rocking plane that was being rocked by the very strong winds that I think were coming at the front of the weakening typhoon. And we sat until 12:30 AM when they finally decided to takeoff.  The takeoff was scary – the plane was jerking from side to side a ton! The rest of the flight wasn’t as bad as I imagined it was going be. I even sent an almost-goodbye email to Mike because I was so nervous about flying in the typhoon winds and storm! The flight just had some turbulence and the landing in Xiamen was just fine.