China Trip: Day 6

Today we got up early, leaving our hotel in Xian at 6AM. In the airport, we taught David some American card games while we waited for our flight to Shanghai. When we touched down in Shanghai, we went and walked around the Bund, a place by the water where a lot of colonial style houses were. It was weird, seeing houses that looked more like they should be in Europe than Asia, but that wasn’t the highlight of this stop. Here, swarms of people took our photo, so we did exactly what we did yesterday- took their photo too. Most people thought it was hilarious, while others didn’t even notice. In about a half and hour I got 20 pictures of people with cameras pointed at us, Afterwards, we went to visit a local family that lived in the area. We split into two groups, one group visiting one family and the other group visiting another family. I was a little nervous to meet this family because I thought that my interview questions would offend them in some way, but I didn’t have to worry. The woman was very nice, letting us sit in her kitchen and look around her house. At first it was awkward, but after the teachers started her off with a few questions the students joined in. I learned that she has a daughter that is in a university nearby learning to teach children. She is also retired from working at a textile factory, and the government gives her a lot of money to live on in retirement. Her parents live nearby, and she plans on taking care of them in their old age. Contrary to popular belief, these families do love their daughters, and their children are free to marry whomever they want. She also talked about their holidays, like the dragon boat festival, which coincidentally began today! During this festival, they eat rice and ham wrapped in bamboo leaves, and they swim in the ocean to be in the same waters as the dragon boats for good luck. The one thing that sounded odd was that she had no criticisms for the government- in the States, almost everyone has some sort criticism for the government, and is willing to voice it. Not so much here. After learning about her lifestyle, we looked around the house. The place had two bedrooms, a small eating area, and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. It was very small in American standards, but actually it was a very spacious house compared to a couple decades ago in Shanghai. We went outside to meet up with the other group and see what was going on outside. There were these colorful exercise machines, and a table where a bunch of people were crowded around. They were playing this crazy card game there, and they got into a lot of fights about it. An older man stood to the side of the chaos with closed eyes, moving his arms slowly. He was practicing his daily tai-chi exercises. After leaving the community, we went to a market. As we got out, it looked a lot like the farmers market that we have in the summer, but this one was much bigger, and sold some pretty strange things! We walked down one side of the market, where live fish swam in shallow buckets. We saw eels and frogs and shrimp, along with flounder and leeches-all still alive. As we continued down the aisle, people began chopping up the fish, with blood and guts flying everywhere- now I know why the floor was wet. This one lady put down sections of a fish for sale, but its head and tail were still moving! I think we just chose the unlucky place to start, because as we continued to look around, we saw fruit stands and clothing areas. I saw the biggest cucumber I had ever seen, if it even was a cucumber, and the fruit that we had our first night- dragon fruit! I was going to buy the dragon fruit, but the man said it wasn’t in season so I bought some cherries instead. We continued exploring, and found this stand with all sorts of eggs. One egg that looked like a normal chicken egg turned out to be black and solid inside. People had gotten those on the plane ride to Xian- they were pretty nasty. We learned that they were preserved eggs- that was why they were black! The market was really cool- there was such a variety of things to buy there, and I was sad that we didn’t have more time to look around. We also got to see an acrobatic show that day. It wasn’t amazing, but I did like the contortionist act. We went to dinner, but everyone was getting sick of eating the same basic food at each restaurant. The only thing that every table ran out of was the watermelon!
Initially, I had expected Shanghai to be more like Xian- smaller in size but still industrialized. I was definitely wrong. Yes, there were more buildings for industry, but they also had some major companies in buildings there. The World Expo had brought in a ton of business- and people. The place was insanely crowded, even though we never even went to the Expo. Instead of a little farmland like there was in Xian, Shanghai was all cities. Their architecture was a big example of western influences on the country: Because some European countries (France and Germany) had control of certain districts in Shanghai for some time, the architecture was very western. An example of this was the buildings that lined the Bund- almost every single one had some sort of pillar, or window shape, or other aspect of European architecture. I had to look really hard to find that signature sloping roof on a building in Shanghai.