Day 7
Shanghai Day 2

The bed I slept on was not much better than the floor one bed, but wow the difference in noise allows me to sleep a lot better. This day is my last day in Shanghai. I fly out at night, back to Beijing. We flew in to one airport and we are leaving through a different airport. The one we are leaving from is the domestic airport and the one we came in on was the International airport.

I am not very hungry so I pass on the breakfast in favor of a coffee from the mini-mart. My friend pays for the breakfast because it is no longer free now that we are not on the first floor. We decide that we are going to head to "Shanghai's City God Temple" which is a Buddhist temple. There is some cool shopping around the place and some neat things to see.

We grab a taxi, deciding that we get to see so much more by taxi than in the subway. The place we arrive at looks like the traditional Chinese architecture. As we pull up in the taxi my door is surrounded with people and their wares. I get out and I have to explain that I do not want someone to watch my bags, or a Mao watch, or even a Rolex. How about a T-shirt? Nope just get out of my face. This gets old pretty fast. Plus I am not all that fond of being touched by people.


My friend wants to buy some stuff so we stop in a couple of small shops. I end up buying a couple of things, nothing to write home about. We slowly make our way into the shopping complex that used to be portions of the old temple. The buildings look great and I take lots of pictures of them. I notice what looks like water bubbling out of a manhole cover. I take a picture and then all of a sudden people start washing themselves in it and drinking the water. What the heck.



There is a bridge that has nine turns in it that leads to a tea house. The magical number nine. We make our way across the bridge thinking that the temple part has to be there, nope. It is pretty none the less.


We finally find the temple after directions from three different people. The entrance is hidden right next to where we got out of the taxi. We pay our 10 RMB and enter. Immediately we need to buy Incense so that we can pray. We buy one bundle and I am shown how to pray, well it is not really praying, but more like wishing good on others. I don't pretend to understand Buddhism, but a little wishing people well never hurt anyone.


There are some amazing things in this temple. First off the band starts to crank it up. Wow what a racket. They are banging on everything and screaming, maybe this is Chinese rock 'n roll. We listen for awhile and decide to check the rest of the temple out. There are these tree like structures that have little prayers in them. A person pays a bunch of money or does something really cool and they get to have theirs lit up in the temple. There is also a room that reminds me of the Duvall tavern. Except instead of dirty dollar bills hanging from the ceiling and walls, there are prayers. These prayers are from school children asking for good grades. Maybe this would have helped me in high school. Damn I wish my parents were Buddhist, someone besides myself would have been praying for a miracle during those tests.


The statues are amazing and I am given a story about the different ones. My friend's grandma was a Buddhist and so he had some education when he was younger. He is able to tell me about most of them. It is really interesting how each one symbolizes an emotion or a state of your life. But the general theme seems to be pray for happiness, and except that there will be times when you are not happy. Sounds reasonable.

After we leave the temple we decide to go down town and see the tall buildings. We head to the Bund, which is the water front across from downtown. The weird thing is that the downtown is so huge that it is now across the water to. When we first get out of the taxi we see a nice fountain but as we climb the steps behind it our breath is taken away. The river has a bunch of boats traveling up and down it, but on the other side of the water are the tallest buildings. The Oriental Pearl Radio and TV tower stands out as something special. Next to it are several other impressive buildings. Most notably the JinMao building. It is too bad that it is cloudy because the top of the buildings cannot be seen.


We decide to take the bund Sightseeing tunnel that goes under the river to the other side where the tall buildings are. We purchase a ticket for the Tunnel, JinMao (tall building) and to see the fish swimming. The tunnel sounds really cool, but it ends up being a cheesy light show in a tunnel. When we exit we look around for the where to see the fish. We walk and we walk, we find an aquarium and that is not the place. What the heck. We finally give up and grab some food. The two things that we need to do are go up in the Oriental Pearl and the JinMao building.

The oriental Pearl has three locations in which to view the city. One at 90 meters, one at 263 (863 feet) meters and the top floor of 350 meters. The tower is actually 468 (1535 feet) meters, but because it is a radio tower there is no way for a tourist to get to the top. Of course we buy the tickets to stop at all three floors. This is not only about seeing a cool city, but it is also about going as high as I can in a building. We get out at the 263 meters and take a couple of pictures. Boy it is foggy. I am so excited that I say let’s go to the top right now. So we jump in line to go to the top. We wait 15 minutes and then we head up. We get out of the elevator and guess what; we cannot see a damn thing. All we can see is clouds around us. Bummer. Oh well we are still way high in a cool building. We head back down to 263 and take a bunch of pictures of this great city.


After we finish taking pictures we head to the 90 meter stop and there is some weird playland toys things to try, I am not sure why we paid the extra money for this stupid kiddy crap. I know eleven year olds that would think these things are lame. Oh well we take some more pictures and then head down to the bottom floor.
On the bottom floor, we also have admission to the Shanghai History Museum. You get this when you purchase the uber ticket. We decide to check it out only because there are a bunch of cool cars that we can see. We start to take some pictures and then we realize that this museum is huge and so we just start walking fast through the place. I would have loved to have spent more time in the museum but we needed to see the JinMao and catch our flight back to Beijing. I felt like a flunk out on a field trip to a museum the way we cruised through the place. Here are some of the pictures we took on our flight through the museum.


We grab a taxi and head to the JinMao. This is called a building and the Oriental Pearl is called a tower. The distinction is subtle, but it is used to classify the fact that the Oriental Pearl is the highest tower in Asia and the third highest tower in the world. The JinMao is the 4th tallest building in the world at 420.5 meters (1380 feet). The cool thing is that you get to go to the top of a building unlike a tower. The JinMao also looks pretty cool. We are not as excited because we know that we will not be able to see much, but still we are going up in the 4th tallest building in the world. As a side note, I have been in the third tallest in Chicago. At the top we, of course, do not see much. I notice something strange, there is a building being built next to us. I stare at it and then suddenly a clearing, this building going up next to us is even taller. Wow. The way I noticed it was something was descending out of the clouds right next to us. We never did see the top of the building, but we did find out that it will be the tallest building in the world when it is complete. The coolest part about this building was that in the center of the top floor is a view to die for. The center of this hotel is open and on the top floor you can look down through the middle and see the lobby at the bottom. When you are looking down, you sense vertigo because you are lying on the window and looking straight down. It was really cool and well worth the trip up.


We have a couple of minutes to spare so we have some fresh squeezed juice and relax for a few minutes. We then decide to check out a shop next to us and then head to the airport. I take some pictures of the cool bridge on the way to the airport.


The airport is pretty straight forward, and the flight is comfortable. Although I think the seats are a little close together. My knees touch the seat in front of me and I am lucky that the old lady in front of me does not recline her seat. The Chinese are very funny about lines and rules. As soon as we land everyone turns on their cell phones and makes calls. Their seat belts go off and even before we have parked, people are taking their luggage down and lining up to get off the plane. They try and shove me around so they can make their way up the aisle, but I have an old lady to protect so I push back. I hear some grumbling in Chinese so I turn around, and for the first time nobody is staring at me. I am now back in Beijing and I can smell the air again.