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Published: July 18th 2006
The day after our medical exams (Saturday) we went down to People's Square and the Shangahi museum. This was a day for cultural immersion.
We started in Renmin park. The older folks were out practicing TaiChi throughout the park. There was a large lotus pond with many people taking pictures, including me. I've included only a couple of the many I took. There was also a small band of people playing traditional Chinese music.
The museum was great! It was nice to get a sense of the history and culture of China. Many of the items dated back 6000 years. They has bronze, pottery, masks, and clothing depicting each region and each dynasty. Obviously the Qing and Ming dynasties were the most prevalent because they were the most recent (AD 1500's to 1900).
The opportunity to purchase copies of the jade, pottery and bronze pieces was very tempting. Seeing as we are still in travel mode, we reluctantly walked away.
As we walked around, college students from X'ian would stop and talk to us so they could practice their english. We met two couples on our way to the museum. Once out of the museum, we were
approached by two sisters, one of which we had met earlier. They were Hui Qing and Zhu Zhu. They invited us to a tea ceremony that their professor had recommended. We decided it would be interesting to immerse ourselves in the culture. There was always a chance that it was a scam but they seemed sincere. We knew we could always change our minds if it was uncomfortable.
The name of the tea house was Kung Fu. Not kidding. It was nice to have them along since they could translate for us. We learned about oolong, jasmine, and green tea. There was one tea that is rolled into a large ball in many different shapes (like heart, kidney, or round). When a tea ball is placed in hot water it opens up to reveal a flower inside. It can keep up to a week in cold water. It was beautiful. There is a special way to drink the tea. For women you put your thumb and forefinger on the rim, you middle finger under the cup and stick out our ring finger and pinky. Men must keep their ring finger and pinky under the middle finger or they think
you are ....
After the tea house, the girls treated us to lunch at a local restaurant. Now anyone who has traveled knows to be careful. All the food was cooked and came to the table steaming, first good sign. We also decided a beer was a good addition. I don't know if alcohol would kill anything in the stomach, but we figured it could not hurt. We did not want to hurt their feelings. Believe it or not, we are okay. I think I had an MSG reaction, but it was only a headache the next day. As long as we don't make a habit of eating in really local establishments, we will be fine. The food BTW was excellent. I think worth the next days headache.
On Sunday, we took the Magnetic Leviation train to the airport to get our tickets for Hong Kong. We were having trouble finding a travel agent that spoke English and took credit cards. So we went directly to the airline (China Eastern Air). The train is faster than the one in Japan. The train got up to 431 km/h which we estimate was over 200 m/h. It took less than
10 minutes to go the same distance that a taxi took 30 minutes to drive. After that we went over to the TV tower (The big tower that is in our previous pictures). Being Sunday, the area was packed, Dave needed more cash, and the line was long. It reminded us of Seattle's space needle park except with 10 times as many people. To get some cash we walked over to a Mall called Super brands mall. I am guessing it rivals Mall of the Americas. It was 10 stories high and they were still working on it. I noticed that it had many american brands of clothing and cosmetics. I made note.
Instead of going up the TV tower, we went to a restaurant on the 10th floor and had as good a few of Downtown Shanghai as we would have in the tower. And it only cost us dinner.
We are now in Suzhou. More later.
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Marie and Myriam
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Pictures
We liked the pictures that you had posted on your blog. We want to go in Shanghai too to discover by ourself the culture of this country.