Out of School Activities – Our Busy Sunday, by Andrew

Possibly the most active day of our time here in China occurred this past Sunday, when we visited multiple tourist attractions in Shanghai. It was an all day trip, beginning with our catching of the subway at 9:30 at Jiang Su Station en route to Pudong, the financial district of Shanghai.  Pudong is also where our flight from San Francisco came into. It is a beautiful part of the city, with great new architecture and clean parks. We walked from the subway station at Pudong to Century Park, which has awesome waterfalls and a really good views of downtown Shanghai.  We meandered through picturesque Century Park until we reached the bicycle rental, and not only were they bikes, but they were 3 person bikes! We formed groups of 3 and mounted them awkwardly. They turned out to be incredibly hard to control for our group, and John King and I barely fit into the bikes that were made for smaller people.  After our group had minimal success controlling the huge bikes and our chain fell off, we took ours back for a stagecoach look alike with pedals. That was much easier to control, but again we hardly fit in therefore making pedaling difficult. After bikes we ate lunch on the lawn, which was very pleasant seeing as it was 70 degrees and sunny, perfect park weather.  I think it's fair to say none of us expected this in November.  

After Century Park we took the metro to the Pearl Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Asia. It has a very radical design, and is easily the most recognizable building in Shanghai. So once we entered the Pearl TV tower, we formed in groups and each took the elevators up to the top observation deck, which is located in the second largest red ball. There is a higher place that civilians can go, but that would be the restaurant, and reservations are needed even to just go there. It was an amazing sight once we reached the top of the tower; the entire city of Shanghai was laid out in front of us.  The tower is just beside the Huang Pu River, and great views of that were seen as well. After some souvenir shopping atop the Pearl Tower, we took the elevators back down to below ground to observe the historical museum. This underground maze was incredible; so many of the statues and figures look so much like real people.  Included is a huge array of separate exhibits all on different parts of the Chinese culture. Following the Pearl TV tower was dinner and shopping at a huge shopping center complete with food court. We all broke off into a couple large groups and went for dinner first.  My group went for McDonalds, and it was a good change of pace, although the Chinese food has been delicious. Then came the shopping, which consisted of walking into a couple different stores, little real buying. The last part of the mall trip was spent at the local Starbucks. It helped us Americans think of home. 

The first thing we did immediately after the mall was venture to an underground tunnel, and at first I thought we were taking another metro. It actually turned out that we rode these large plastic tubes that ran along a track underneath the river.  It was a slow – moving trip, and there was a small light show set up while we traveled under the Huang Pu. When we reached the other side we began walking along the Bund, which is a long and wide sidewalk that sits right on the river. From the Bund we got excellent views of nighttime Shanghai, and the Pearl Tower was especially beautiful from the opposite side. After a little time on the Bund we caught a large tour boat that took us up and down the river, a very excellent time to just relax and observe the city at night. The bulk of us spent this time on the top of the boat, where there were chairs and a couple tables. We talked, listened to music, but mostly we all were able to take in nighttime Shanghai in our own way. After an hour or so on the River we had returned to the place we had started from, and our wonderful day was about to come to a close. We said our goodbyes to the Chinese girls who had accompanied us as well as our American classmates, and took our separate cabs back to our host homes. For me this day was the first day to truly appreciate Shanghai as a complete city. We saw it as beautiful nature, industrial prowess and sightseeing, and finally we saw Shanghai as a city of peaceful night.    

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