Day 29: Trip to Koreatown

Day 29: Today, being Saturday, I had a lot of time to put off homework, so I headed to Koreatown with my roommate. I had always wanted to visit Shanghai’s Koreatown at some point because Shanghai, an international city, is known to have a large population of Koreans, so I wanted to see how other Korean immigrants had adjusted to a foreign country (just as I’ve seen in the States). And to be honest, after weeks of just Chinese food, I really felt the need to consume some sort of Korean food. We took subway Line 10 from Shanghai Jiao Tong University to the Longbai Xincun Station (AKA 龙柏新村站 / lóng bǎi xīncūn zhàn). The weather was pretty bad today with a light drizzle and stagnant-like air (which you can kind of see through my pictures walking to Koreatown), so it was difficult traveling around, but we walked to Hongquan Road (AKA 虹泉路 / hóng quán lù), which was where Koreatown was technically supposed to start. On our way there, we saw these weird statues across the street of Zodiac animals with round bodies scattered randomly, so we felt the need to stop and take pictures. 

 

 

I definitely could tell that we were getting closer to Koreatown as all the people passing by us were talking in Korean, and when I saw this entrance sign covered in Korean words, I was certain that we were in Koreatown. 

After struggling to choose what to eat (because there were so many restaurants), we went into a restaurant that seemed to sell all basic Korean dishes. I wanted to try so many things, but I settled on just getting Kimbap (AKA 김밥 / seaweed rice rolls) and Ddeokbokki (AKA 떡볶이 / spicy rice cakes), which are both really basic dishes that I love. Man, I can’t live without Korean food. 

 

After eating, we decided to walk around some more because we were so full. We visited W-Mart, which was a Korean grocery store, and if we had a fridge in the hotel, I would’ve bought so much food, but I had to refrain from buying anything. It sold nearly anything you could think of to be Korean, and it had smaller stalls that sold other foods that I would’ve eaten if I wasn’t so full. 

 

After walking around, we finally found the famous Seoul Plaza that was supposed to be the center of Koreatown. The mall was three floors, and it was set up like most Korean malls with small stalls throughout each floor. I didn’t take pictures on the actual floors, but I took pictures of the general structure of the mall from the second floor. My favorite place was definitely the heavenly Morning Glory store, which I was excited to see after witnessing the last Morning Glory store in Georgia close quite recently. This Morning Glory was the biggest I had seen in my life (of course, I know there are probably even larger ones in Korea), so I was very excited. I ran around looking at all the stuff, and if I had the money, I would’ve bought everything.

  

  

After spending a couple weeks in Shanghai, I definitely went through homesickness, especially in terms of severely missing Korean culture, so I felt that this visit to Koreatown really helped me out internally, and I had a lot of fun (my roommate said she did, too!). I probably won’t have the chance to go back because our time in Shanghai is winding down, but I’ll definitely remember this trip for a long time.