China Day 27: Duolun Rd. (多倫路)

Last day of class! Went to buy another Totoro cell phone holder for my brother at a store on the pedestrian walk/mall near the classroom. Ended up buying a crank-it-yourself music box that plays the theme from Laputa. They were nice enough to gift wrap my purchases too! 

Still wrapped. Keeping it as a post-MCAT present for the self. Hehe. 

With the Totoro cell phone holder, which is no longer wrapped. 

Afternoon adventure = Duolun Rd. (多倫路). It was weird because this street was full of buildings in European architectural style, and everything was under construction. Cited as a touristy street, we saw no tourists, but Wakefield claimed it was probably going to be a major tourist spot in the next year, which is definitely plausible. It was a very cool place and very pretty! But it just felt so odd and out of place among all of the Chinese locals and all of the construction. I felt pretty out of place snapping pictures of it all. These are photos from various websites, but of things I definitely saw during my afternoon at Duolun Rd. All credit goes to the original photographers!!

http://shanghai.cultural-china.com/html/Travel/Featured-Streets/200812/03-2312.html

http://unearthingasia.com/uniquely-far-east/historic-duolun-road-shanghai/

http://unearthingasia.com/uniquely-far-east/historic-duolun-road-shanghai/

http://www.chinafacttours.com/shanghai/attractions/duolun-road.html

http://www.q2hoo.com/2009/10/my-stroll-in-hongkou-district-shanghai-duolun-road.htm

Italian chef statue holding a sign that says "KOREA" in the middle of a street in China with a bunch of European-style buildings. CONFUSED.

Booked it to the banquet for dinner. It was a sort of goodbye celebration and a thank-you to the professor and TA for a wonderful month. The professor also insisted that we adhere to the traditional banquet style practices and toast the professor and TA, so there was a good 20 minutes of awkward, hilarious jumbled Chinese toasts to our professor and TA, especially among the people who didn't speak any Chinese at all. Also, the food was super good. Best banquet-style meal we've had. Kudos to the professor's wife who organized it all!! (Again these are not my photos.)

Some of the guys trying to toast professor in Chinese. haha!

EASC360 family <3

China Day 28: Last Full Day in China!

And what a day it was.

Grabbed breakfast with friend at KFC. Yay for KFC 6 RMB breakfasts! Pretty much like a breakfast dollar menu. Too bad KFC doesn't do free delivery like McDonald's, otherwise I would have ordered from there everyday. (Photos again courtesy of Wakefield. I continue to lament the loss of my camera.)

KFC breakfast. Om nom nom. :D

Afternoon adventure was Qibao (七寶), which was pretty out there (as in on the edges of the city), and nothing like what I expected. There were so many people, but I should have expected that. It's China. It was also...raining. Boo. But it had been raining for a week now, so...also expected. There were aisles and rows of outdoor shops and food places and hidden among these were random exhibits about Qibao crafts and trade. We went to two: one called "Cotton Textile Mill" (棉織坊) and the other the "The Old Trades House" (老行當).

The cotton textile mill strangely came with an exhibit on traditional marriage/weddings. Depicted is the bed for the newlyweds, which was ridiculously small.

We ran around everywhere looking for this one bell tower...and it ended up being this tower thing at the entrance. Fail. 

See the little piggy? I threw a coin in on the first try! Whoo!

Wakefield had fish balls. They looked good. Q.Q

We split a red bean paste pastry of some sort. Also good. :D

After Qibao, my dinner consisted of eating bread I had bought earlier from 85 Bakery in my room, but I ended up going to a burger place called Piros with Wakefield later. I didn't eat, but he did, and he said it was really good! As in one of the best burgers you can get in Shanghai. They also speak mostly English, so we made the mistake of speaking to them in Chinese and thus being designated the Chinese speakers for the rest of the evening. :P

Burger!

We got back around 11:00 pm-ish. Went out to karaoke at around 12:30 am, and did not return until 6:00 am. A new record for me in terms of how late I have ever stayed up. I pretty much took a ten minute nap before we had to head down at 7:45 am to meet in the lobby. Haha.

China Day 29: Heading Home

It's never too early for chaos. 7:45 am was the designated time to meet in the lobby, get everyone checked out and everyone's luggage ready to go. If only I had a photo of the chaos that was the Motel 168 lobby on checkout day, but I don't, so you're just going to have to imagine 16 students + 1 TA + 1 professor with each student carrying two relatively large-sized check-in luggage (suitcases. everywhere.) and two carry-on's (backpacks. everywhere.)

We rode the Maglev train to the airport. The Maglev train is a magnetic levitation train (Maglev), though we couldn't really tell it was floating. It is super fast with a top speed of 431 km/hour (268 mph), and therefore, the ride is only a grand total of about seven minutes long. (Cherish those seven minutes.) Photos below courtesy of Wakefield, as my camera was lost (probably pickpocketed) the day before. :(

Maglev station!

Maglev train! Can you tell if it's floating? (Because I can't)

 The typical airport shenanigans: checking in, security, waiting to board. Also, saying goodbye to our TA, who was the last to leave us. (Professor said goodbye back at the motel, and tour guide David disappeared sometime after he arrived at the airport with those who didn't take the Maglev.)

Goodbye picture with our TA!! :)

During our half hour layover at the Incheon airport in Korea, we observed a traditional Korean instrument performance in an titled "Experience Traditional Korean Culture" or something mildly ridiculous like that. The side panel also said that the performance was free...but ONLY for foreigners (so native Koreans are charged?). o_O Ended up being just a really poor translation, as we judged after reading the Mandarin text above it. (No surprises there.) The performance was really nice though! :) Reminded me of Angela and Haneulsori haha. :P

Traditional Korean Instrument performance!

Landing in LA, hurried goodbyes, and the official conclusion of our trip. I couldn't believe a month had gone by. I still can't, really. Haha.

So here's the story....

Usually, you make a blog about your journey, while you're on your journey, right? Given the blogs of my friends in other countries right now, I'm assuming that's how it goes. But given the sketchiness of Motel 168 internet and the absolute impossibility for anything to load at all, much less photos, and given our busy schedule and thus my lack of time to do the assigned readings, take advantage and explore as much as Shanghai as humanly possible in the rain and in a month, organize photos for assignments and photos for myself, and also madly type out accounts of my journey (which I did, but it's a total mess on my tumblr), I think I'm pretty justified in creating this blog retrospectively.

So here is my story of my month in Shanghai. Backwards. Yep, I'm starting from the back, one day at a time, and should be finished late July/early August if I stay on schedule. I guess even after the China trip is over, I'm just a sentimental cheeseball, and just can't let go of all the memories that quickly, so this will be a good, healthy way of coming to terms with the memories of a great month. :)

Enjoy! :D

P.S. Photo of my kung fu shoes...from China! I went outside and practiced kung fu in them today haha. :) Also notice the giant mosquito bite on my right leg that has not yet healed even though it's been over a week since I returned from China. Lame.

Kung fu shoes! :D