winding down in Shanghai June 24,25

Nihao! Hope everyone had a very happy birthday, 232nd! We all had a blast (Ha!) down in Hot Springs on Lake Hamilton. Rest, relax, boat, float, play, and of course...eat!!
So, let's see if I can continue on with our journey, the last 2 days. We took our bus to Shanghai from Hangzhou, wait, did I tell you that we went to the National Silk Museum? Well, that was fun and a great follow-up on the couple in Lijuang who made our comforters. The museum had rooms showing the history of the Silk trade, the famous Silk Road routes, and the scientific portion of the life cycle. They also had live silk worms demonstrating their skills right in front of us...neat to watch. Of course, there was a demonstration by skilled marketers of how to detect real silk from a fraud and in case you're interested...real silk doesn't burn with a flame but rather, smokes. So, the next time you're not quite sure in the retail store, just pull out your lighter and test the flame on the inside seam...ha!
So, Tuesday we were on our way into Shanghai with hopes of it not being as hot and humid as the day before. The scenery was quite dramatic in terms of the enormous amount of new construction and very different architecture from the other areas of China. All of that tea money and other 'new' money building 3 story homes with fancy cupolas on top, very different. Shanghai weighs in with 18 million people, 24 million when you include the suburbs. That's ALOT of people! But interestingly, it didn't feel like that much and I can only guess it's because there are so fewer cars. In China, (did I aleady mention?) you pay 110% interest on a car when you but one and a very stiff annual usage fee. If you live in the city and plan to park the car you can count on paying upwards of $15,000-30,000 just to park it. Yikes!! That's real motivation to ride a scooter. Aside from all of the wonderful architectural sites out guide, Vicky, pointed out along the way into the city, we spent 2 hours at an absolutely marvelous museum, the Shanghai Museum. It was a wonderful comprehensive museum of 4 floors and included a very special on-loan exhibit from the London Museum of the history of the Olympic Games. I really had to pace myself so I wouldn't miss one bit of this fabulous place. So, I disconnected from everyone to drink it ALL in. The top floor was all furniture (Ming and Qing dynasties), breattaking!! Then there was the ancient Chinese Jade Gallery showing pieces that were so amazing I just shook my head, and the Chinese Minority Nationalities' Art (one of my favorites) including dress and ornaments, dyeing, weaving, and embroidery, metalworking, pottery, lacquering, cane, and bamboo, and MASKS!! All was so very unique and amazing how they were able to create such elaborateness without...technology. Of course, what else did they have to do on the weekends for fun, huh?! The next floor down had the history of coins (including shells), history of seals, history and examples of calligraphy spanning all the dynasties, and painting dating Wayyyyyyyyyyyy back, all beautiful! The 2nd floor showed Ancient Chinese Ceramics, history & famous kilns & all of the different types of ceramics beautifully displayed and described. Then, there were the sculptures of all the dynasties particularily many religious figures (a huge room of buddhas) and it truly is amazing to me that they made these with so little 'know-how' so long ago, the antiquity is awesome. The history of ancient Chinese bronze, classifications, decorations, and casting techniques and craftmanship rounded out the standards of the museum. Then.....the Olympic exhibit. WOW!! How exciting that we were able to witness this exhibit, it was terrific. No photos were allowed but I did purchase a small museum book on the exhibit even though they only had it in Chinese just to keep a record of what was there. So, y'all come on over for a glass of wine or pop and look through my various museum books. I couldn't buy one everywhere because of the weight but I did enough damage collecting some.
Now, on to the Shanghai Jade Buddha Temple: This was really something, one solid 12 foot piece of carved jade from knees to the top of his head with much other jade and gems adorning it. This buddha had such a peaceful, gentle expression on it's face and is very carefully protected. This buddha and the reclining buddha were brought from Burma to this temple by the abbot Wei Ken. We saw the present abbot while we were there as he toured the rooms and prayed, that was neat. I took photos carefully, not to offend. We couldn't photograph the Jade buddhas. There were also the 3 huge golden buddhas in the Heavenly King Hall, gorgeous! We then drove over to the Bund, the heart of colonial Shanghai bordered on one side by the river and the other by the old hotels, banks, offices, and clubs of wetsren commercial power. Many of the old buildings are still used and a sure eyecatching part of a stroll along the water. Gaze at the other side of the river for an eye-full of new skyscrapers that amaze anyone when you're told that 18 years ago all of that land was farmland, incredible! This is called Pudong and used to be the city's poorest area of slums and brothels. It became a special economics zone in 1990 making it now one of the largest building sites in the world. We reboarded the bus and traveled along Nanjing Lu (road) where all of the foremost shopping is and goes on past People's Park then, the theatres, hotels, cinemas, restaurants, salons, etc. Oh boy, lunch and time to shop!! Katherine (our tour director) took Gwen and myself to an amazing bookstore (Book City) that was 7 stories high and we had to go to the 7th floor to the very small Foreign language section for a cookbook that is the best. While there, I picked up Chinese versions of Little Marmaid, Harry Potter, Mulan, and Finding Nemo for only $3.00 each. Also, some music CD's and a Beijing Olympics concert DVD. Hurrt back to jump on the bus by 6:30pm to go to see the Chinese acrobats perform at the Hyatt Regency hotel. That was surreal! Those people are beyond flexible, they define double-jointed! Unbelieveable!!!! Dinner was on our own but several of us convinced Katherine to take us somewhere REAL! So...we knew Shanghai is famous for seafood and we got to 'see' our food we ordered, swiming first. We had razor clams (2 necks), abalone, shrimp, fish (head-on of course), fresh veggies and lots of local wine. Total YUM!!
Okay...you and I both need to take a break!! So, it's 11:15 pm and I'm going to bed and will continue with June 25th in the morning!! Okay?! Bon soir!