tteonayo: Day 20: Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center & Back to the Bund

Day 20: Today, we had class as usual and also had our tutoring session with our 辅导老师. After everything was over, our professors took us to visit the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, which is basically a museum showing the past and future of Shanghai located in People's Square, Shanghai, PRC. The building itself was aesthetically pleasing, and it didn't surprise me at all that the building won top Chinese awards in architectural construction. Everything inside the museum was also well displayed in the museum, and it definitely felt so cool to be able to walk through Shanghai's past and be able to take a virtual tour through Shanghai's even more modernized future. I didn't get pictures of the building on the outside, but here are pictures of the lobby!

These are exhibitions highlighting Shanghai's past. You can see my roommate also trying to take a nice picture of the display!

As we were wandering around the museum, we walked into this area that we initially thought was a cafe, but it turned out that it was also an exhibition! I didn't really understand what it had to do with Shanghai's past and future, but I guess it was one way to capture China's culture in a way. Most of the room was dedicated to dumplings as there were sculptures of dumplings, dumpling trees, and people posing with dumplings. How interesting, right? Along the walls of this room, the museum had displayed women figurines and cats, where, again, it kind of confused me initially, but it was still fun to see!

Now, here's the highlight of the museum! The future of Shanghai! We walked through what modern Shanghai could hold, like the concept of "Smart Houses" and the widespread uses of QR codes, which were really cool to see. There was also a huge scale model of Shanghai showing all the existing and planned buildings in Shanghai. The model was definitely where I spent the most time because it was just so cool, and I tried to find all of the places that I had visited in Shanghai. The Shanghai model was just so breathtaking, and hopefully, I can come back to see it again because the pictures just don't do justice. The 360 degree theater next to the Shanghai model was awesome as we "flew" through modern Shanghai. It made me slightly dizzy, but I totally would've regretted not visiting the 360 degrees theater. The trip to the museum definitely was able to show me how quickly China was changing!

After we left the museum, we headed to eat dinner on East Nanjing Road at a buffet (AKA 自助餐馆 or zìzhù cānguǎn) called 好伦哥 (AKA hǎolúngē). It had a large selection of food including seafood dishes, American-style dishes, traditional Chinese dishes, fruits, and desserts. The restaurant also offered hotpot although I didn't get hotpot. I ate so many plates of food, and I also tried my first dragon fruit, which basically was textured like a kiwi but tasted like nothing. Sorry for the weird description. Like I said, I ate so much food, but I was so hungry that I forgot to take pictures of all my plates, but I took a break before dessert to take a picture of the different desserts I tried at the restaurant, but you can see all of my plates in the corner of the picture! Before heading to the Bund for our night boat ride, we walked around in the shopping center around the Bund, and like someone in our group pointed out, the area looked like a good mixture of Disney Land and New York City.

When the sun finally set, we headed to get on the boat tour on the Huangpu River, or the river along the Bund. Like mentioned in a previous blog post when we visited the Bund, I really wanted to come back to the Bund to see the night lighting in the area and to see the area with better weather, so this boat trip was awesome. The trip was even more breathtaking than the Shanghai model at the museum, and there was a nice breeze, so I was really excited during the whole ride.