Shanghai

Last week we had three days off plus the weekend for a school event called "Sports Meeting", which is basically like field day for all the freshmen. For the past few weeks the freshmen classes have been running and exercising on their own in preparation for the competition. Some of the teachers also had to participate, but none of us foreign teachers were required to stay so I took a trip to Shanghai. This is my third time in China but it was my first time to go to Shanghai.

Shanghai is located in the eastern tip of China and about midway up latitude-wise. It sits right at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Asia's longest river, so it's been a major port city for a while now. There's also a river called the Huangpu River that branches off from the Yangtze and runs through the city.

On one side of the city are huge, modern buildings.


I never made it over there during my trip. Instead, I spent most of my time on the south side of the river. Unlike the north side of the river, the southern side is full of Western-style buildings built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which was Western businesses really started getting interested in Shanghai. I've never seen anything like it in another Chinese city. There was a small section in Guangzhou that had a lot of Western architecture, but Shanghai is full of it. As you get further out of the city, of course, the buildings are more modern and less strikingly Western but the heart of the city looks very European.




I spent most of my first day just walking around some of the older parts of the city. Then it was either on the first or the second day that I met a couple other people staying at the hostel. One was a guy named Scott from Wales who was looking for a teaching job in Shanghai. He found one within the three days that I was staying at the hostel. Another guy I met, Matt, was from Chicago and had just finished a year in Afghanistan and was traveling around East Asia for a while before going back to the US. I hung out with Matt for a couple days until he left for Hong Kong.

I also met another American guy named Mike who was taking a break from work and traveling for a while, and a Polish guy named Mikhail who is a freelance translator for Polish MTV and Comedy Central. His most recent job was to translate Jersey Shore into Polish. I also got a chance to see a couple of my classmates from Davidson Chinese 101, Andrew and Whitey, who are teaching English in a city called Jiaxing, which is about an hour train-ride away from Shanghai. It was good to see them and I had a good time hanging out with all the people from the hostel.

On my last morning in the city I took the metro to what I found out was one of the ritziest parts of the city. But I knew where I was going. It took me about 15 minutes to walk there, deliberate for another 20 over a bowl of noodles, and finally make a decision. So here's what I got.



I tried it out in the driveway the night I got back and I've been going to the People's Square 人民广场 every day for the past few days to practice. I'm really liking it.