Lost In Shanghai

A big surprise about China Tours is that they control your schedule from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. And they keep you busy, very busy. Finally, by Day 9 of our trip, they gave us a day off in Shanghai. Some people in our group decided just to stay in their hotel, because they were just tired. We decided to go shopping and see Shanghai with Özgür and Selin Tanriverdi our new friends from Dubai.

Based on the recommendation of our guide, we walked to Metro City to purchase a new camera for Solange. Her point and shoot camera was slowly breaking, and I decided to spring for a professional SLR type camera during this trip. Metro City is a very different shopping experience than American retail outlets. It is a huge building with four floors of all things electronics. It is like 20 Best Buys all rolled into one. The problem is that it is possible to buy the same camera from over 20 different merchants.

First off, we had no idea what we wanted as I have little experience with SLR cameras. Fortunately, Özgür is a camera enthusiast, and we finally settled on a Nikon 3000 with a 18mm – 200mm lens. It was no easy task to figure this out because there are so many selections by all the manufacturers. Then we wanted a good price but we had no idea. Finally, we found a place with a great deal, but when they realized we were tourists, the price went up. They wanted another $200 for a warranty. I felt like I had been slimed, like I could not trust these people. So we left and went to another shop where we found the same camera including warranty. Great! But now, they won’t accept my international credit card. In fact, they don’t accept credit cards at all. The price was about 9000 RMB or about US$1400. I had no idea on whether it was a good price but I was positive it was a better price than I could pay in Brazil.

But they didn’t accept international credit cards. In fact, they wanted cash. So they ordered a young man to take me out of the building and to get cash at an ATM. The problem is that the ATM had a ceiling of 2000 RMB per day. It was quite the experience but I was able to max out 3 ATM cards and get 6000 RMB, plus I had 1000 in my wallet. So I bring back 7000 RMB and count it out for them. Note: All the money would not fit in my wallet because they only come in 100 RMB notes. But I am still 2000 short. So they finally relent, and they allow me to put the final 2000 on my credit card. So it took us over 3 hours to buy the camera, but now it was time for sight seeing.

A friend of mine told me to visit the top of the Grand Hyatt which is over 100 stories tall. We were also told to avoid the Shanghai Metro by our guide, so we took a taxi. Problem was that the taxi did not know where it was. We left, and got another taxi and we got there. The elevator was amazing. I think it was going faster than 20 meters per second. We arrived on the 88th floor of the building in less than 30 seconds.

We took a bunch of photos, and we looked at the map. This was a map that Selin had from a guide book she had purchased in Dubai. Based on the map and our previous bad experience with Shanghai taxis, we decided to take the subway to People Square on of the ritziest areas of Shanghai. Contrary to what our guide told us, there was no problem navigating the Shanghai subway. In fact it was easy. Everything seemed like it was new and all the signs were both in English and Chinese. After a short while, we arrive in People Square.

After 9 days with China Tours, Selin, Özgür and Solange were all wanting to eat something other than Chinese food. So we went to the McDonald’s in People Square. I went out on the street and bought some of the street food which was totally delicious although it was embarrassing since I knew the name of the food in Chinese, but not how much to pay. I brought my food back to the McDonalds and it was a great meal for everyone.

Then we decided to go back to the hotel. We checked the map, and we figured we had to walk about 3-4 blocks. We walked and walked, and the hotel was not there! We gave the address of the hotel to more than 10 people and no one knew where our hotel was located. We hopped into two taxis, and neither one knew our hotel. I am sure that the language barrier was a problem but we were totally lost in Shanghai, a city of 33M people.

All we knew was that we could walk from Metro City to our hotel, but Metro City was not on the map. We knew where we were, but we had no idea where we were going. Finally, we decided to go in the subway and find Metro City via the subway. We hit the subway around 7 pm on a Tuesday evening – rush hour. The subway in Shanghai is huge. There are large rivers of people going in various directions. With the help of Özgür and good signs, we found the right train going in the right direction. We were about 8 stops away but we finally

The Chinese Arts and Culture

As part of our package with China Tours, we went to four different artistic shows in four different cities. Below is a quick list of the shows and the cities.

Kung Fu Show When I first heard about this, I had thought it would be a Kung Fu demonstration which I thought might be entertaining. However, it was quite different. The Kung Fu Show was actually a small play set to music and dance. The sound system in the theatre was awesome and the music truly floated through your ears. The play was about a young boy that wanted to become a Kung Fu master. He learns the ways, but he loses his focus because he falls in love with a beautiful woman. Ultimately, he finds his way back and becomes a master. The dance moves are quite elaborate and physically difficult. They are running and spinning through the air doing marvelous things. Many thought this was the best show of the tour. The one problem with this show was that photography was specifically prohibited and they made an announcement before the show began. So no pictures. 🙁

Ancient Dynasty This show was very elaborate and spectacular but in a very different way. The show endeavors to give us a flavor of how music, art and dance were during the times of ancient dynasty. Again, the sound system and lighting was fantastic. The costumes were amazing. More importantly than that, there were close to 200 people participating in the show. Because they were all running around changing costumes, it felt more like 400. They also had a few music scenes which really gave a nice feeling for Chinese music and the stark differences from the commercialized western approach to music.

Solange deserves a lot of credit because they allowed photo, and she stood up the entire time, so she could take as many photos as possible. We have the best photos from this show.

The Light Show The Light Show was by far the most ambitious project and expensive production. The concept and the production was done by the same guy that did the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. The light show takes place in a large outdoor theatre overlooking a very large lakes with numerous large stone mountains as a back drop. The entire area is flooded with light including the mountains themselves.

Rather than a couple of hundred people, this shows has close to five hundred, again all in costume with multiple costume changes. It was quite dramatic, but this show fell short because it was quite confusing. There is a story line, but it is not clear how it all holds together. On top of that, since the story is being told over such a large area, it is hard sometimes to see what is happening. And it is harder still to take good photographs. My wife, always the steady hand, did her best, and those are the photos, you see in the slide show.

Acrobat Show If you have not seen the Chinese acrobats, they are certainly worth seeing. They have been travelling throughout the US, and I had the pleasure to see them twice in Myrtle Beach. The show is full of mind boggling acts that defy gravity or how you thought the human body can stretch. Some of the highlights are when they do acrobats on bicycles and they have five motorcycles simultaneously running in a large steel cage.

Unfortunately, we did not take many photos of this show. Before entering the show, we asked the guide whether photos were OK, and he answered affirmatively. When we got to the theatre, we had great seats and immediately starting snapping away. Shortly after, I woman from the theatre came and rudely hit my arm when I was taking a shot. I thought I was blocking someone’s view, so I tried to be more careful. But then she same and hit my arm again, and had a very stern look on her face. Despite our guide’s approval, it was clear that this woman was not. She reminded me of a rule Nazi, but I didn’t want to let this Nazi ruin a good show, so we stopped taking photos. It was a great show, but we only have a handful of photos from the beginning. Oh well, guess you will have to go see it yourself.

Terracotta Warriors

One of the must-see sights in China is the Terracotta Warriors. It is really an almost unbelievable story. Way back, well over 2000 years ago, the first emperor of China make the most elaborate tomb in the history of time. The tomb itself was the size of a small city covering many square miles. He decided to protect his soul in the afterlife, that he wanted to be surrounded by an army of his best servants. So he put all of his people to work to create life size replicas of his army.

Flash forward to 1974, and researchers were speculating that there must be untold treasures in this city size tomb of gold, art, and other valuables. They did not find that, but they found close to 8000 life size warriors, chariots, horses and so on. Although the discovery happened over 35 years ago, they are still working to unearth many of the warriors. It is a pain staking process because they must be careful not to break the warriors when excavating and then they must restore what time has damaged.

It really made me wonder what it was like to be a Chinese Emperor. I really marvel at someone that decides to build a city just for his tomb. Maybe they were going through a recession and it was his way of stimulating the economy and putting the people back to work. On the other hand, the same guy that did all of this was also the one that made the Great Wall of China. No doubt about it, that this guy (Qin Shi Huang) thought really big. If you look carefully at the warriors, each face is different. The amount of time to do this project must have been stunning.

I also learned a lot about photography. The lighting is not very good, and then on top, you need to zoom to get close to the warriors. This is really pushing the limit of what a point and click camera can do. Some of the photos are blurry because you need a perfectly steady hand or the picture will distort. Solange bought a new expensive camera and maybe that will take better pictures in tough conditions like this. Anyway, I still think that the photos give a pretty good flavor of what the Terracotta Army looks like in Xian, China.