Shanghai

Friday June 11

So Jake insisted on getting up early for the free continental breakfast which I was not too crazy about getting up for since my dogs were barking last night and I wanted to catch up on sleep. I ended up going down to check it out, and am I glad I did. Believe it or not, I was able to eat one meal without a single stinking noodle or pork in it. I had good old scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast with orange marmalade and coffee with whole milk and sugar. It was wonderful!! After breakfast we both went back to bed, slept another hour or two, and headed to the Shanghai Museum.

Chinese history is very deep. The main thing I came away with is that China had been technologically advanced since before Christ. Given what they knew then, they should have had microprocessors by about 1200 AD.

If nerds getting excited about nerdy stuff puts you to sleep, you might want to skip the next paragraph, or risk keyboard marks on your forehead tomorrow morning.

These guys were doing bronze casting around 2000 BC, but they did not write then. And not little globs of molten metals, but very sophisticated stuff with dragons and masks on it. They figured out lost wax investment casting by 700 or 800 BC (no Christ yet). And by then they had an alphabet and had inscriptions in their castings. They were doing bi-metallic complex castings around the time Christ came along. They had a piece there showing a mirror they made around 200AD that when sunlight was reflected off it, projected an image onto a screen. I think we think everything was invented in the last 2 centuries, but China was standing on a lot of shoulders pretty early on. I can't figure out why it did not continue after that. Gotta study more Chinese history.

The stone sculptures were the same thing, amazingly advanced before Christ.

So after a nice chat with a student who could speak a bit of English, we headed for Pudong which is on the other side of the river from where we were last night. Pudong is the ultra-modern part of the city and it is impressive. Glass and aluminum buildings and walkways gives it a Jetsons (ask your mom or dad) feel, except there is grass and flower gardens under the buildings (come to think of it, they never mentioned what held those buildings up in the Jetsons...)

We grabbed some bakery goodies and drinks and had a lunch in the park. We keep waiting to see more Anglos with the Expo going on but they are like hen's teeth (ask your gramp or granny).

We took the ferry back over to the Bund on the old side of town (for $0.30 each) and found another hole in the wall restaurant for dinner with 5 ft 10 in ceilings (I know cause I am 5 ft 10 in). Duck and some egg/pork thing on rice (with those nice 600ml beers).

Almost ended up back in the hawkers zone nightmare but managed to find a subway to get us home. Pack up tonight and on the train in the morning. Goodbye Shanghai, I think we got a good feel for your nice city (but not as nice as Beijing).