Shanghai- Friday, August 5, 2016

     Amy told us that "Shang" means "above" and "Hai" means "the sea," so Shanghai, 上海, is "above the sea."  Of course it has long been world renowned as a port city.  If Beijing, the capital is China's version of Washington, D.C., then Shanghai, the financial center of China, is probably analogous to New York City.  It reminds us a lot of Toronto, in many ways, but bigger.

     We can't get Wifi in our room like we did in other hotels, so we called Julie's parents this morning.  We had breakfast at the hotel a little bit later as a way to rest in a little bit.  We tried unsuccessfully to by Disney tickets using the Internet in the lobby, but the sale wasn't going through for some reason.

     Amy met us at 9:00 and we went to our first stop, the Shanghai Museum.  It is a relatively new building which features collections of art that are both ancient and typical of Chinese culture.

     We started on the fourth floor and worked our way down.  The first gallery we visited had many examples of Chinese money.  Of course, there were many of the coins with square holes in the middle, but there were also "coins" from pre-Qin times that were shaped like spades and keys.  They had molds on display to show how the coins were cast.  Scott was particularly interested in the paper money from the Ming Dynasty.  The book The History of the World in 100 Objects, that Scott just finished reading, listed a similar Ming note as one of the first examples of paper money.  Scott recognized several features on it, including the pictures of the stacks of coins to show the value of the note.  Julie liked the section about coins from the Silk Road, which included coins from Alexander the Great's empire and one from Genghis Khan's.

     We looked at a gallery of furniture from the Ming and Qing dynasties.  These beautiful wooden pieces were 100-500 years old.  The next gallery featured jade carvings.  Some were from the Stone Age.  We had seen a lot of jade recently, though, so we went a little faster through here.

     We spent a little longer in a gallery featuring "Minority Nationalities Art."  China is dominated by the Han people, but within China there are many other groups with distinctive cultures.  This gallery featured costumes from each of these ethnic groups.  There were robes from the Manchu people, masks from Tibet, and items from Mongolia.  Julie observed that in a different context, you might mistake some of them as being from native cultures from North or South America.

     Our time was limited since we only had an hour before we had to meet Amy again.  We skipped the third floor, which features painting, calligraphy and seals in three different galleries.  We went to the second floor which features examples of ceramics and porcelain.  There's a reason why our English word "China" refers to fine porcelain.  When we saw the large Ming pot with its distinctive bright white and blue designs, we all thought of the guy who was juggling one last night.

     On the first floor, we saw many examples of Chinese bronze art.  We saw some "jue," ancient wine vessels like the one that was presented to baby Emma from the people of Hubei.  There were also ancient bronze bells similar to the ones that we saw in Hubei's museum.  On our way out, Scott bought some books on Chinese history and mythology, since we are allowed a little more weight in our luggage in our trans-Pacific flight.

     From the museum, Amy took us to the Yu Gardens.  They are sometimes callled the Yuyuan Gardens, but Amy explained that "Yu" means something that makes you happy and "Yuan" means garden, so "Yuyuan Garden" is redundant.

     The garden is surrounded by the Yu Yuan Tourist Mart.  It is filled with "traditional" Chinese architecture.  All of the buildings were white with dark red windows and trim and dark tiled roofs.  The market area was swarming with people and filled with tourist shops and eating places.

     The garden itself was made by a rich man in the Ming Dynasty, and is unusual as an example of a private garden, rather than one for the emperor.  The garden was filled with winding paths, meant to take you to contemplative little nooks and crannies.  There was a pond (or maybe several ponds) that had large koi fish and even a few turtles in them.  Amy explained many of the traditions and beliefs that go with Chinese gardens as we went.  For example, she pointed out a mosaic in the walkway that showed a turtle, which means longevity, and two Chinese coins, which mean wealth.  So the picture was the equivalent of a wish for prosperity and long life.  (Scott did the Vulcan salute.)  We passed through doors of many shapes, including one shaped like a vase and one shaped like a "full moon."  Guardian figures on the roof caught Emma's eye, and we all admired a large dragon that hovered atop the garden along a wall with his frenemy, the little toad.

     After the garden, Amy took us to a restaurant where we got another dim sum meal.  We were disappointed to see that this one didn't have any noodles.   It had spring rolls that the girls liked, and three different kinds of dumplings that Emma tried and rated.  It had egg tarts that Dad ate.  We challenged Anna to eat an egg tart for ¥100, which she did, but she couldn't finish the mysterious black bean and rice dish for ¥500.  She made us laugh for trying though.

     We shopped a bit in the market area.  Scott got a Chinese wind instrument, but now regrets it because it seems like it doesn't really work.  We met up with Amy again at Starbucks, by the "Zigzag Bridge."

     From there, we rode in the van to the Bund.  The Bund is perhaps the most famous spot in Shanghai, and is along the west bank on an island in the Huangpu River.  The history of that spot is tied to European domination of the city in the early 20th Century.  The buildings were built by banking and commercial interests.  For example, the first building we were next to as we emerged on to the Bund was originally built as the offices for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Ltd., but they have since moved to a skyscraper across the river with the more familiar letters of H.S.B.C on top.  Next is the original customs house and its clock tower was chiming as we arrived.  It doesn't seem like all of these monuments to capitalism should have survived so long in a communist country like Mao's China, but there they are.

      A pleasant park and walkway are across from the historic row of buildings.  In spite of how architecturally interesting the buildings on the Bund may be, the attention of most people there, including us, seemed to be on the skyscrapers on the east bank.  These have only sprouted there since the 1990s, but they make an amazing arrangement with the Bund opposite their center stage.  The skyline is not only impressive, but colorful too, and welcoming, with the word "HELLO" put front and center.  The skyline stretches from the red balls of the Oriental Pearl Tower to the enormous "bottle opener" of the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world.  (It is 2073 feet tall. The CN Tower is 1,815 feet.)

     A few barges passed us on the Huangpu River, part of the Yangtze system.  Amy said that the river is much cleaner now than it used to be, but of course, the girls spotted a few dead fish and a rat floating in it.  Everyone else was looking up at the buildings.

     The driver brought us back to our hotel, and we were sorry to part ways with Amy.  Even though she was with us for one fewer day than the other guides, we have her the same tip as we gave the others because she helped us out a lot.  For the rest of the trip, though, we are on our own.

     We went up to our rooms to cool down (though the weather was bearable- 86 degrees and overcast.  Julie and Anna called to set up a Chinese message from the people in the hotel.  It was funny to hear Anna describe it when they got back.  She was shocked when the masseuse sat on her to rub her back.  Julie liked it, though, and said it helped with her hips.

     We then went out to look for dinner.  We headed to the famous Nanjing Road, the pedestrian street famous for its shopping.  Our first stop was the seven-story bookstore that Scott and Anna were at yesterday.  Scott was still trying to find a DVD of the Monkey King, this time using a picture he had printed out, but he still had no luck.  However, the girls found some English language books for the plane ride home, including the new Harry Potter book- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  We were content to eat McDonald's again and succeeded in getting our order placed correctly.

     The skyline had looked so amazing in the daylight and Amy had so encouraged us to see it at night that Scott convinced everyone to head back to the Bund.  Julie needed a nap first, but about dusk we started to walk back.  You would think that since our hotel is the Bund Hotel that it would be pretty close to the Bund but apparently it's a lot farther than we thought.  First, we walked towards the skyscrapers, then we joined the mass of people pouring out of the pedestrian area on Nanjing Road, all headed towards the Bund to see the same thing we wanted to.  We joined the unending flow of people and the constantly tweeting policemen's whistles to emerge eventually at about where we were this afternoon.  The lights were pretty, with multicolored twinkles on each of the skyscrapers and a few of them now animated billboards.  Illuminated cruise ships on the river added to the people viewing and the sights to see.  But we only spent a short time there before turning around to make the march back through the hordes to our hotel again.  All the while, Scott and the girls were practicing their best Jersey accents to yell, "Ay! I'm walking here!" at any car or scooter that might approach them on the crosswalks.