Making Every Minute Count

Hi, it's Shannon again!

Since today was one of only two days we have in Shanghai and our second-to-last day in China, we packed in a whole bunch of stuff. We started out this morning with a small breakfast at a coffee shop downstairs. Then, we took a taxi to Yu Yuan Garden. That's probably my favorite place in the city; it's very peaceful and beautiful and in the middle of what's known as "Old Shanghai." Above is a picture of me in one part - you may notice the tour group in the background. Apparently every guided tour in Shanghai wanted to start their day at Yu Yuan.

After that, Matt and I walked around Old Shanghai for a little bit and then took a taxi to the Bund. We had gorgeous weather today, as you'll see in the picture of Matt in front of the Pudong side of Shanghai. The very tall structure with the orbs is the Oriental Pearl Tower (aka Shanghai Tower, aka TV Tower)...more on that in a second.

Then, we went back to the hotel and met up with my dad and Jet, his business associate who's been a wonderful tour guide for us this week. We went over to some of their colleague's offices to meet up with another one of them for lunch. After that, we drove over to Pudong and went up to the top of the Tower. It's the second tallest building in the world, and you can see for miles on a clear day. Unfortunately, it was pretty hazy today, but it was still an amazing view.

Following that, we went to the museum of the city of Shanghai in the basement of the tower. Then we walked over to the Shanghai Hyatt, another incredibly tall building, and had drinks in the bar on the 86th floor. We walked around on that side of the river again after it got dark so we could see the Bund all lit up. Then we drove back to the other side of the river and went to dinner. We went to a Thai restaurant so my dad could get one of his favorites, shark fin soup. Matt had that as well (I passed, thank you very much), and then we headed back to the hotel, 12 hours after when we first left. We're exhausted but we feel like we got to see a lot of the best of Shanghai.

Shanghai Surprise

Yeah, what I said in that last post about going to Xi'an? That didn't so much happen.

We headed to the Beijing airport this afternoon with every intention of getting on our flight, but China Eastern Airlines had other plans. The plane that was supposed to take us from the capital out to Xi'an ran into mechanical problems at the airport on the other end. The crew brought the plane to Beijing for repairs, and was then scheduled to fly BACK to Xi'an, pick up the original passengers, and finally come BACK to Beijing for our flight (given they could fix the problems). They couldn't switch us to a later flight or another airline because everything was all booked up.

The end result of all these delays (and the uncertainty surrounding China Eastern in general) was that we bagged the trip to see the terra-cotta warriors and flew south to Shanghai instead. Now we have a few days to see the sights in China's financial capital, which is very exciting.

Just one photo today, since it was a travel day (and an odd one at that). It's a shot of me and Shannon outside of the building where the Chinese Communist Party was born. As you might expect, it's an unassuming building, now in a high-fashion, proto-capitalist section of Shanghai.

Lots to see tomorrow, since we only have two days to see Shanghai, so I'm sure we'll have more pictures to share.

Everything New is New... Again

Hello all - just a quick post tonight, since we're both pretty tired from a full day at the Imperial Palace (aka Forbidden City) and Tienamen Square.

As has become a common theme from our visit to Beijing, it's hard to describe the enormity of both the buildings and the open space at the Forbidden Palace. This picture of the two of us across the street from the huge picture of Mao at the gate to the Palace does about as fine a job illustrating the point as anything could.

With the Olympics heading to Beijing for the 2008 summer games, the entire city is getting a massive facelift, including some of the major sections of the Palace. In fact, there's a tremendous sense of turn-over in Beijing as a whole - if it's old, it's turning into something new; if it's new, it's being improved into something even newer. Most of this growth looks great, but it comes with more than a healthy portion of construction dust, too.

Only time will tell if everything is in order when the Games come to town, but it seems safe to say that if we come back after the world pays its visit, we'd see a fundamentally altered city.

More tomorrow, when we head to Xi'an for a few days.

Seventeen Arches

It's Shannon this time. Hi, everybody!

Today Matt and I went to the Summer Palace, northwest of the city. It was created several hundred years ago as a summer spot for emperors who wanted to get out of Beijing's heat, mostly burned down during the Opium Wars in the 1860s, and rebuilt in the latter part of the 19th century by Empress Dowager Cixi (a fascinating person).

It was incredibly beautiful. You can see why someone would want a summer house like this. We walked all around the grounds and buildings, which surround a big lake. You could spend several days there and not see everything. Highlights include a 5-ton statue of Buddha, a marble boat, and a bridge of 17 arches leading out to an island where the Empress would go to worship. There were lots of people there, but it still felt very peaceful. We've also been lucky enough to have fantastic weather so far.

This is a picture of Matt next to the sign for the "Hall for Listening to Orioles," which he was very excited to see. He was disappointed to learn it had nothing to do with baseball broadcasts. Now we're off to dinner from street vendors - we're excited to try that after two nights of nice restaurants. On Sunday we went to A Fun Ti, which has distinctive food from a Western part of China that's a blend of Chinese, Indian, Mongolian, and Kazahkstani food; on Monday we did a Szechuan hot pot.

Till tomorrow!

"Why am I seeing rudimentary markets?"

For our second day in Beijing, we got out and explored some of the shopping in our part of town. There are tons of little shops all along Wangfujing Road, where our hotel is, so after breakfast this morning we walked both sides of the road.

Shopping is a full-contact sport in most of the shops here. Outside of the established, recognizable stores nothing has a set price. The people working the stands will see you looking at something, hand you a calculator with a number keyed in, and that's when the bidding begins.

It's standard to counter with a price as low as 10 percent of the original price, and they won't take "No" for an answer. Walking away from a deal is just a negotiating ploy and it's common for the seller to grab you by the arm and pull you back to make another deal.

Beyond the shopping, Shannon and I also saw the Temple of Heaven this afternoon. The Temple was the scene of an elaborate religious ceremony designed to ensure a prosperous harvest. Today's pictures are from the Temple of Heaven (with modern Beijing as a back drop).

"That is a great wall."

I thought Richard Nixon's comment on seeing the Great Wall of China was appropriate for the first post on this mini-blog I've started to detail this trip.

Shannon and I are in China for this whole week (two Princetonians visiting the country, which is where the blog gets its name), so I thought I'd use a blog to talk about what we see, post a few pictures, and give people a chance to comment back on our experience.

Today, our first real day on the ground after getting in late last night, we got out of the city and walked the south side of the Badaling section of the Great Wall. The pictures of are the two of us on the Wall - I think they give a pretty good idea of the perspective and overwhelming size of where we were.

It sort of goes without saying that the Wall was impressive. What I was more surprised by was the number of people who wanted to have their pictures taken with Shannon and me. I guess it makes sense since redheads are rare over here (either that or there are more Terp fans here than I thought).

More tomorrow - I think we're exploring the city itself, so I'm sure we'll have some good stories.