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.
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