Back to the Future

We woke up bright and early the next morning at 7 am for an "appetizing" breakfast of unidentifiable Chinese dishes and watermelon at the hotel before making our way back to the Wenzhou airport we had so fondly left the previous evening.  After the inevitable two hour delay on the Wenzhou runway, we were en route to the city above the ocean, Shanghai.

As we bid farewell to our Chinese farmer friends for the last time, we returned back to our American tour group bubble and subsequently stopped at the airport KFC for lunch.  Although I'm not usually partial to Chinese egg tarts, the variety sold at KFC actually tasted more like creme brulee in a flaky pastry crust than anything else.

It was almost immediately apparent that Shanghai deserved its unofficial title of "the China of the future."  Modern art decorated the pristine Pudong International Airport, skyscrapers towered over us as we wove through the city, and little kids eating dinner at restaurants with their families focused their attention on their laptop screens as they worked through reports and homework.

Our first stop in Shanghai was one of the ten tallest buildings in the world- the Jin Mao Tower, an eighty-eight story edifice envisioned as a modern Chinese pagoda.  Floors 56 through 87 house the Shanghai Grand Hyatt Hotel, while floor 88 serves as an observation deck which not only allows visitors to take in a panoramic view of the Shanghai skyline, but also peer all the way down into the middle of the tower to the Hyatt lobby 32 floors below.  Upon directing our gazes upward, we were treated to a close-up view of the Shanghai World Financial Center, currently China's tallest building and 4th tallest building in the world.  The Financial Center bears a large parallelogram-shaped hole near its apex to prevent the building from looking like a Japanese knife.  It was here in the observation deck, gazing in awe at one of the tallest buildings in the world that the idea of Shanghai being the "China of the future," as trite as it may sound, truly sunk in.

After descending back down Jin Mao's 88 stories, we made our way to Shanghai's most famous waterside district, the Bund.  Perhaps the only aspect of Shanghai more interesting than its embodiment of the progress and advancement of China and, arguably, the world, was its history.  The city's modern history began in 1842 at the close of the First Opium War and the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, which opened Shanghai to British colonization.  Eventually, Germany, France, the US, and Japan all carved out their own divisions in the city, the vestiges of which still linger today.  The Bund, part of the former British district, was lined with buildings built in the British style, which now housed the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and the shops of foreign fashion designers.  The Bund was recently remodeled and reopened in 2010, replete with added greenery, an observation deck, underground road... and a statue of Mao.

From the Bund, pedestrians could view Shanghai's arguably most famous skyline, that of the Pudong New Area.  This area, which lay in the Pudong area of Shanghai east of the Huangpu River, was home to our previous stop, the Jin Mao tower, as well as the Shanghai World Financial Center, HSBC, and the Oriental Pearl Tower.

Our dinner that night was the first in a modern-style shopping mall, and thus continued our re-entry into the modernized world.  We dined on a number of dishes, including some great xiao long baos which are typically associated with Shanghai.

Our group capped the night off with a performance by the Shanghai Acrobats- an array of young kids balancing, contorting, and flying through the air- essentially a Cirque du Soleil show with an all Asian cast.

As the evening concluded, we retired to the Shanghai Sheraton Hongkou Hotel, which was just a bit nicer than our abode the previous night in Wenzhou.  

After a much needed rest, the next morning we headed west out of Shanghai to the historic city of Suzhou.  Our final component in the trifecta of factory visits, following the jade factory in Beijing and the terra cotta factory in Xian, was a silk factory in Suzhou.  There we had the opportunity to view the many stages of silk processing- from silkworm to finished product- and, of course, had the opportunity to purchase as many silk products as we wanted at the conclusion of the tour.

 Our friend on the right was quite skeptical of the silkworms on display

Sadly there are no silkworm labor unions

Near the end of the tour, our guide Mei asked if any of us wanted to test the strength of the silk.  My challenge was to pull a sheet of silk over a wooden frame.  Try as I might, I was only able to pull the silk about 1/4 of the way down the frame until the silk would stretch no further.  Some of the other group members attempted to stretch silk over a mattress to similar results. 

From there it was a whirlwind of continued silk activities as we passed through room after room of silk bedding, linens, and pillows for purchase.  As we left the silk bedding area, a stone path led us to a small department store filled with silk clothing and paraphernalia.  We began by catching a fashion show displaying many of the higher-end silk garments, after which we perused the many available goods.

 

Although we had had a jam-packed morning, our day was in fact only just beginning.

Random China link:  Gaokao- Entrance Exams