Day 7: The Bund & Yu Yuan Garden

Day 7: Our group met up really early this morning to visit the Bund, which is known as 外滩 (Wàitān) in China. Before going, our professors recommended that we conduct research in terms of the history and influence of the Bund, so I guess I can give you a brief history lesson! Basically, the Bund describes the buildings and the surrounding areas of the region on the bank of the Huangpu River. The area of the Bund was originally a British settlement. After Shanghai became a major trading port, buildings were constructed in the area and businesses boomed. Many different countries contributed to the growth of the Bund, which led to the various beautiful buildings, including many Western-style buildings. Although the victory of the Communist Party of China led to the buildings of the Bund to be used for different reasons, after changes in economic policies in China, the buildings were restored to their original uses. We took a lot of pictures of the skyline of the Bund (and got to see a lot of really pretty buildings, including the Peace Hotel, which is a hotel that many famous and important people visited in the past). Also, our group visited the People's Heroes Memorial Museum. Unfortunately, we weren't able to take pictures in the museum, so I took pictures of the beautiful rock carvings outside of the museum commemorating the revolutionary martyrs. We also ran into more Chinese people who wanted to take pictures with our classmates, which is always fun to take pictures of, too. Again, sorry for the bad alignment of the pictures; hopefully, I'll get better at this!

 

 

The weather today wasn't the best with the rain and the wind, so hopefully, I can come back and take better pictures on a better day, or hopefully, I can come back at night to see the night lights and ride the sightseeing Maglev. After our rather quick visit to the Bund, we headed to the Yu Yuan Garden. Everything was so beautiful, but yet again, I wished we had visited on a better day. It was fascinating to think this garden was originally just created as garden for Pan Yunduan's father. Imagine getting a garden like this as a gift.

 

 

Outside of the Yu Yuan Garden, there were also so many souvenir shops and good places to eat. We had the chance to eat 小笼包 (xiǎo lóng bāo AKA soup dumplings), which is very famous in Shanghai. I know it sounds weird, but they cook it in a way in which soup ends up in the dumplings, so you would poke a hole in the dumplings with your chopsticks to drain out the soup before eating the dumplings or use a straw to drink the soup in the dumplings (if not, you'd probably burn your mouth). It was really good, and it's something you simply must try in Shanghai. Like mentioned above, the weather wasn't the best, so after eating, we quickly went around eye shopping, but I definitely plan to come back to the Yu Yuan area to buy gifts for friends because there were a lot of hand crafted souvenirs being created in different stalls. Today was definitely a great day despite the weather.

Day 3 & 4 & 5 & 6: School Days

你好 again! I hope you figured out what that Chinese phrase means! Sorry for so many posts in basically one day. Like I mentioned in the first post, I'm behind in my blog posts, so I'm quickly trying to upload the pictures and posts I have written out on my Word document. Even at this exact moment, my VPN is continuously reconnecting and disconnecting. I love China, but I should of definitely looked more into better internet options.

Day 3: Today was the first day of classes, and well, it was a lot more than I expected, but hopefully, after taking these classes, my Chinese will get better. To explain briefly about my classes, we have class Monday through Thursday. Also, during our 6 weeks in Shanghai, we will be taking 3 weeks of Business Chinese and 3 weeks of Chinese for Current Events. In our 3 weeks in Qingdao, we will be taking Economic Development and Sustainability in China. Finally, for all 9 weeks in China, we will be taking a class on Chinese Conversation. Wow, that's a lot. But, again, hopefully, after these classes, my Chinese will get better! After classes, we visited the school cafeteria, which has ridiculously cheap food for the amount of food they give us, and I keep forgetting to take pictures, but I'll make sure to take pictures and upload them soon. Today, we also had our first day of 武术 (wǔshù AKA Martial Arts), and, wow, it was more tiring than one would imagine. Can you find me in the pictures?

 

The highlight of my day was visiting Metro City Mall right next to our host university with my roommate. The best thing about being on the Xuhui Campus of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is definitely how close all the malls, transportation, and food is. Anyways, I had to go to the mall to find an adapter for my computer charger because I realized too late to buy one in the States. [Word of advice: when going to China (or any other Asian country), please make sure to buy an travel adapter.] After bothering the information desk lady with my bad Chinese, I found my way to the extensive computer section of the mall where I found an adapter. We decided to explore a bit, and we made our way to the top floor, 大食代 (dà shí dài AKA Food Republic), which was basically a huge mall food court designed to look like street food vendor shops. I wanted to try everything, but we decided to eat dumplings and get fruit smoothies. We went down to the basement to get these long bread pieces filled with cream that had a really long line. Again, I forgot to take a picture of the bread and note what the store was called, so I promise I'll go back and take a picture and upload it. Luckily, I got a picture of the dumplings? And a bad picture of Metro City Mall (the big red ball on the left picture) that I'll retake at some point?

 

Day 4: Again, today, we had class, and our first dictation quiz! It was different from any dictation quiz I had taken before, but at least I now know how to prepare for it, right? Our professors were nice and gave us a day off from our tutoring session to recover from the 时差 (shíchā AKA jet lag), which was awesome. I spent the day just exploring the campus because it takes me a long, long time to remember roads and directions, so I definitely needed the practice. Afterwards, I proceeded onto getting homework done and falling asleep, which was definitely not the best way to recover from jet lag.

Day 5: Today was more exciting. After class, we had our first 太极 (Tàijí AKA Taichi) class. It was definitely more peaceful and relaxing than our martial arts class on Monday, but with my terrible arm and leg coordination, it was hard to follow along and remember the moves, but hopefully six weeks of the class will at least teach me the basics. Our professor mentioned that Taichi is supposed to heal our bodies, and I'm definitely ready to be "healed" after my rough Spring semester, so I guess I'm looking forward to this class more than martial arts. There was also a photography class held in the same location as our Taichi class right before us, and even after our class had started, the people didn't leave and decided to take pictures of our class, especially the foreigners (or the non-Asian students) in our class, so that was a little awkward, but I feel like it's something I'll get used to while here. Luckily, because I'm Asian, I blend in here so well that most Chinese people pay no interest in me, and I've actually had quite a few people here ask me directions. Here's a picture that I took of the photography class who was taking pictures of my classmates. Wow, that was kind of a confusing sentence! We also had group dinner today, which saved many of us from having to go explore and find food to eat. Doesn't the food look good?

 

Day 6: Yet again, we had class, but today was the last day of class for the week, which was a nice feeling. However, we had tutoring today with the local tutors from the university after class. After much confusion on what our individual time slots were, I headed to meet my tutor. I can't remember what the characters to her name were, but she said I could call her Mao. So I did. We read through my Chinese text, and she helped me with my Chinese tones, which is probably one of the biggest reasons that Chinese people can't understand me. Like past alumni for this program said, even after the first day, I felt that the tutoring was very helpful, and definitely felt that it would be awesome to have more time with the tutors, but I guess I should just be thankful for being able to work with the tutors twice a week for 30 minutes each. After tutoring, I chose to finish homework and head to bed because we had a field trip planned early tomorrow morning.

Day 1 & 2: Arrival / The Shanghai Museum

你好！I'm assuming most people will be able to use basic context clues to figure out what that means, or I guess, if not, you can head to Google Translate. It's already Day 14 here in Shanghai, China, and I was planning to post more often, but Internet at this hotel is a lot worse than I was expecting, so I lived off the unlimited 2G data on my phone (thankfully provided by T-Mobile). I tried visiting various internet cafes that had been recommended by alumni from this program, but I couldn't stay for long because all were small, dark rooms that reeked of cigarette smoke. Definitely, not good for the lungs. I also tried the WiFi offered by convenience stores, but unfortunately, I don't have a "Chinese phone number," so I couldn't exactly receive the verification text messages to access the internet. I've had a lot of fun here in China (aside from the stressful dictation quizzes assigned everyday in class) and took many pictures that I've wanted to share (but had to compile in a Word document), so I guess I'll get started?

Day 1: After delayed flights and a long layover in Korea, I arrived in Shanghai at approximately 8:30 PM. Unfortunately, this meant that I missed the group bus to the university hotel (教师活动中心, AKA the Faculty Club Hotel). Nervously, after collecting my bags (also after standing at the wrong conveyor belt for a good 30 minutes), I headed to the taxi riding area. I was aware of the "black taxis" (basically, fake taxis) in China, so, basically, I was pretty nervous, especially with my not-so-great Chinese language skills. Luckily, there was a man there (I still have no idea who the man is), who quickly assigned me a taxi, got me in a taxi, and moved on to the next person. My taxi driver was a nice lady who seemed very understanding of my not-so-great Chinese. After giving her the address of the hotel, I tried to put on my seat belt but soon realized that although the belt strap existed, there was no seat buckle, which I pretty much expected because it's pretty common to not wear seat belts in Asia anyways. I just sat back and enjoyed the ride, and let me say, Shanghai at night was quite beautiful. The driver also drove really fast, so the wind flowing into the taxi felt great. She actually drove so fast that I beat the group bus to the hotel, so I guess missing the bus was a good thing? I definitely should've taken pictures on the taxi, but I totally forgot because I was enjoying the views out the window while also nervously and continuously asking the driver if we were going to the right place. I'll definitely try to get pictures in next time. After getting checked in, meeting my roommate, and taking a shower, I fell right asleep. Wow. It was a long day. 

Day 2: Today we headed to the famous Shanghai Museum, which is pretty much a world-famous museum of ancient Chinese art. We went pretty early, but the line was still very long. I think we stood in line for a good 30 minutes. After getting through security, our professors let us just scatter and explore, so my roommate and I went through all of the different exhibitions - we definitely learned a lot and had a lot of fun! 

The inside of the museum itself was quite beautiful, especially the dome roof! The museum actually stops entries each day after 8000 entries, which means a huge amount of people visit this museum, right?

 

My favorite exhibit was definitely the Chinese Minority Nationalities' Art Gallery, which I believe is a permanent exhibit, so if you ever decide to visit Shanghai and the Shanghai Museum, make sure to stop by this exhibit. This exhibit basically displayed costumes, embroideries, batiks, metal wares, bamboo and wood works, and masks of China's various ethnic groups. Everything was so fascinating, and it made me realize again how big China was as I had the chance to see so many types of different clothing that shared similarities with other cultures neighboring China. The clash of various cultures seen through the clothing (and of course, through all the other works of art) was just astounding. I especially liked one piece of clothing where the sleeves, in terms of both the design and the color choices, really resembled the sleeves of the "hanbok" (한복), or the Korean traditional dress, so I just couldn't help but take a picture!

 

Of course, we also visited other exhibitions, and while in the Ancient Chinese Ceramics Gallery, the ceramic pillows really caught my attention. There were just so many designs, and although some of them seemed a little strange, it was definitely interesting. Our biggest question was whether or not these pillows were actually comfortable. 

 

 

Yes, I took a whole bunch of pictures of pillows from ancient China, and I actually have some more, but I'll save those, so you can go visit the Shanghai Museum and take pictures of them yourself! While at the museum, I also got see Chinese bronze, Chinese sculptures, Chinese paintings, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese jade, and the list goes on and on. Like I keep saying, the museum is totally worth visiting, especially since they have other cool exhibitions throughout the year, like the Treasures from Japan's Daigoji Temple exhibit, where they unfortunately wouldn't let us take pictures. However, here are just some other pictures I took while at the other exhibits, but again, everything looks so much more beautiful in person! Also, even though the last picture's orientation throws off the spacing with the other pictures, I just had to upload another picture of a pillow.