I woke up this morning around 9am, and walked down to the lobby to get a big breakfast before our group embarked on a very busy day of sightseeing. We all met up around 10am and went to a nearby subway station, riding one of the lines to the Tianzifang market. The area was set up as a maze of narrow alleys, lined up with small stores that had some relatively well made products. I went into a few different stores and ended up buying a few traditional Chinese fans. After I bought my last fan, I could not find any of the other guys I had been walking around with. I was quite worried, but about five seconds later, I found Gabi, our program assistant, and Liliana, so I walked with them for a little while and they let me decide where our entire group got lunch! Naturally, I gravitated towards familiar-looking food, so we ended up going to this Italian-looking place and ordered some pizzas and french fries.
After a nice meal, we took another subway to get to the Shanghai Tower. It is currently the tallest building in China, standing 632 meters (2,073 feet) high! It has a very interesting design, as it has a 120 degree twist going towards the top of the building, which actually helped the designers cut back on materials needed to build it. We took an elevator all the way up to the top, and it shot us up at a top speed of 74 kilometers per hour (46 miles per hour)! When we got to the top, we looked at an astounding view of the city. Some of us were able to vaguely see people playing soccer on a field in the distance; they looked like ants to us! Also at the top were basketballs signed by past and present NBA superstars like Steph Curry, Allen Iverson, Yao Ming, and Kobe Bryant. This was a very cool introduction to Shanghai.
Our next stop was to the Pearl Tower, where we went into a walkthrough museum and learned about how Shanghai evolved from a basic, feudal society to the booming international hub we see today. From there, we went out to dinner as a large group and had a traditional Shanghai dinner. There was lots of different cuisine available to try, and I ended up eating a lot more than I had for past meals in Beijing.
The final plan of the day was to go on a Huangpu River cruise. The Huangpu River is the river that separates the western and eastern parts of the city, and there is a very slight difference between each part of the city. We were able to see that the western part of the city has been subject to much more development and urbanization than the eastern part, which has many of the older colonial buildings that give Old Shanghai its charm. The stark differences were very cool to see, and being able to see the city skyline all lit up at night was surreal. It is one of the coolest skylines I have ever seen, and it all came into fruition over the past two decades!
Today was a great day of sightseeing, but over the next three days, we will be back to university, company, and site visits.
-Colin
