Day 12 was our last full day in Shanghai and in China! This trip has gone by so fast. I feel like I was just on the plane flying a crossed the world. For our last day in Shanghai we traveled to the Yu Gardens. While we were on the bus our tour guide told us some facts about Shanghai and some of the history of the Gardens. All around our hotel are massive malls. You can walk in either direction out of our hotel and you will find multiple malls. These malls are filled with luxury stores and are very expensive. Our tour guide told us that there are two main streets in Shanghai that are famous for their high-end stores. We drove down one of them today to get to the Yu Gardens and some of the stores we saw were Gucci, Nike, Adidas, Under Armor, Coach, Louis Vuitton, and many more. The tour guide also talked us about the amount of people and cars in the city. It is crazy to think that around 15 million people live in the city center of Shanghai alone. The number of cars on the road is also crazy. There are three million cars registered in Shanghai. To reduce the number of cars on the road people have to pay around $15,000 for the license plate.
Once we arrived at the Yu Gardens, we had to walk through these tight streets to get to the official entrance. The Gardens were built in 1577. The word Yu in the name means please your parents. The first building when you enter is considered to be the most important. Major events would take place in this building such as weddings or funerals. As we walked through, it took about 45 minutes. We learned about the different structures such as the corridor having a roof to protect them from the weather. We saw a unique table and set of chairs made out of tree roots. There was a lot of little details throughout the Gardens that I thought was so cool. The little details mean they took their time when they built it and wanted to make each detail have a meaning. After we finished walking through the Gardens, we had free time to walk around and shop.
Outside the Gardens there were vendors and expensive stores. We ere also able to eat lunch there. I enjoyed pan fried dumplings which had more like bread dough on the outside than noodles. Then we went back to the hotel to pack and prepare for our presentations. We then walked to a conference room and each group presented their company they came up with. The company needed to produce something that would benefit the people who lived in China.
Next, we walked to a nearby restaurant for our farewell dinner. Dinner was very good. We enjoyed some traditional food from the area. Then we made our way back to the hotel to get ready to travel to the airport. We left for the airport around 8:30pm for our flight back to the States at 12:30am.
