Shanghai

Almost two weeks ago during National Holiday I took a trip with Regis, Devon, and Brittney to Shanghai, Hongzhou, and Suzhou. These places are south of Beijing on the east coast about the same latitude of Georgia in the U.S. Shanghai is the financial center of Mainland China and one of the most amazing places in China. Hongzhou is about a two hour bus ride from Shanghai and is the Chinese version of Lake Town. From there we went to Suzhou, a river town that has several streams flowing thru town, and it’s the closest thing China has to Venice. After that we headed back to Shanghai and hopped a flight back to Beijing.
The trip started on Saturday morning when we left Shanghai on a flight from the Capital Airport in Beijing and arrived at Shanghai about two hours later. We jumped in a cab and found out that our Hostels road wasn’t on the map. So after a few phone calls and what seemed like an eternity we finally got a hold of the hostel and got to our room. This hostel was about $10 a night we even got our own bathroom. Our first couple of days in Shanghai we spent mainly at the Bund and Pudong. The Bund is the street across the river from Pudong, and Pudong is the most famous skyline in Mainland China. On our second day we went to the second ball of the observation tower and got to look our over Shanghai. From there we met us with a Chinese friend that we had met during the Olympics and let them show us around for a little bit. We went out to dinner with them and ate some Shanghainese food and tried to speak to them in Chinese. The next day we did more of the same and went to the expat area of Shanghai which was extremely expensive. We ate Thai that night and left for Hongzhou the next day.
Leaving for Hongzhou, and took the lazy way out which turned out to be the hard way. We packed all our things up and got a cab that took us to the bus station in Shanghai. Since this was national holiday and everybody and their mother was traveling we decided to make a deal with the cab driver and have him take us to Hongzhou. He agreed and everything was fine until we actually arrived in Hongzhou, and he didn’t want to take us to our destination. So we refused to pay him the total amount and got into an argument with him over were our drop off point was. He apparently didn’t know the town and didn’t know where our hostel was. We argued for about 15 minutes and started walking away when he finally asked for directions. The guy that gave him directions decided to ride shotgun and we crammed the four of us in the back seat. We finally got to the hostel and spent the rest of the day renting bikes and exploring the town. Our hostel was a decent place that fit eight in a bunk bed style room with the bathroom just downstairs. The next day we woke up early and rode around the whole lake and climbed a huge hill with rocks that overlooked the lake. That night we met up the some of our friends and went out for a few drinks. The next day we did more of the same and relaxed before getting ready to go to Suzhou.
The next morning we left for Suzhou bright and early. We didn’t spend the night because there wasn’t that much to see, so we locked out bags up at the bus stations and expored that town for the day. We took a motorcycle 4-seat cab to one side of town and walked until we came to the place where you could ride the boat down the streams through town. Our boatman wore a rice hat and sang traditional Chinese songs to us as we floated downstream. After the boat ride there wasn’t much else to see so had dinner and got on another bus back to Shanghai. During this short week we had traveled to three different places relatively close to one another and they were in three different provinces. So now I have almost been more provinces in china than I have states in the US.
We ended up getting back to Shaghai late due to traffic and lost our reservation at the hostel. We then had to find another hostel that had openings, this was sort of a blessing because the hostel we moved into was 10x better than the one we lost. This new hostel had a movie room, ping pong table, pool table, roof top bar, and a computer room all for around $16 dollars a night. We spent the next couple of days seeing Pudong and the bund at night and relaxing in the park. The pictures don't do the skyline justice. Shanghai is an amazing place because of its progression espically in the last few years. The Pudong skyline is so new that the tallest building in Asia (completed in 2007) isn't even on the postcards yet. An intresting fact is that China has 25% of the worlds large crains that are used to build Skyscrappers. If you add that with the number in Dubai it equals 75% of the worlds large crains, compared to NYC's total of 3. I think Shanghai illistrates exactly what the rapid growth of China really means and I am intrested how that will translate in the future. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/Shanghai02?authkey=ykdIdwVbyo4#