Away to Shanghai

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

This was the day to go to Shanghai. Breakfast, get on the bus, and drive to the airport at Guilin. Once again I highly recommend the spending time in Yangshou if you get the chance.

The bus ride was uneventful and the scenery along the way was stunning. The air was much cleaner today making more things visible. When we arrived at the airport in Guilin we got on the plane for the flight to Shanghai. A meal on the flight was our lunch. We had the “honor” of being some of the first people to set foot in a new terminal at one of the Shanghai airports. The terminal was nicely appointed but there were still bugs to work out with the elevator systems and moving tourists to their tour buses. We made it through we were off to see Shanghai. Well as much as you could see in a few hours.

Jin Mao Tower

Shanghai is the financial center of China and has a larger population than Beijing in a much smaller area. There are high-rise apartment buildings whichever direction you look. There are many tall buildings in the downtown area. We were headed to one of those building to ride and elevator to the observation deck on the 88th floor. The elevator makes the climb in 45 seconds, a lifting experience. You can see much of Shanghai from the tower but visibility is severely limited by the haze of the ever present air pollution. You could see people washing the windows of the “bottle opener” building (right) very near to where we were. These buildings in downtown Shanghai are incredible architectural and engineering feats.

Yellow River

We next spent a short time on the banks of the Yellow River. The group took pictures of each other with many different backdrops including the communications tower that is downtown. Nearly all of us had an ice cream cone there. Everyone enjoyed the short time on the banks of the Yellow River.

Silk Market

Next we were off to the silk market. We had a short presentation on the silk moth and it larvae. The pupa of the moth is used to make silk and unfortunately the moth that is metamorphosing in the pupa is killed to get the silk. There is no danger though that this species of moth with go extinct. A demonstration of making a silk duvet was given along with a exhibition of how strong silk is. After all of the hype we were let into the store. We did buy a duvet and cover along with a few other silk items and the prices were pretty good.

From here we went to the hotel. The hotel was absolutely the worst one we stayed in while on the trip. The room we were in had visible patches in the wall and the tub area had a lot of black mildew. We had dinner in the hotel and while the food was actually pretty good it was the first time we did not have enough for everyone to eat their fill. I was pleased we would only be at that hotel one night.