Sightseeing in Shanghai, October 31

We started out our day with breakfast at McDonalds. Take a look at where the sink is to wash your hands. I guess you wash your hands or everyone knows…….. No diet Coke so we are having withdrawals! :-0

The national language in China is Mandarin, but there are many different local dialects. The local dialect in Shanghai is different from people just two hours away. Our driver said that he is not from Shanghai and so when his wife speaks the local Shanghai dialect he can understand some of what she is saying, but can not talk back. Our guide thought that was very funny!

We went to the Bund, Nanjing Road and Yu Gardens today. They were all very cool places. You won’t believe the tall building that we saw! It is called the World Financial Center. It is 404 meters high and gets really narrow at the top. It was the tallest building in the world for a few months this year. Then they built a taller one in Taiwan and another one in Dubai. The weather is still very foggy and rainy, so we postponed our trip to the TV tower that is in the back ground of some of our pictures (Oriental Pearl TV tower). We hope to do it on Sunday, since that is the clearest day we will have in Shanghai.

The Bund is very impressive; it runs along the Huangpu River. Bund means outer beach. There are huge buildings, some are tall and newer and some are old and built by foreigners over a hundred years ago in European style. There were many boats and one was pretty cool with a very large advertisement board on the side. Some were so full they looked like they were going to go under the water. Under the Huangpu River is a tunnel that has two levels. One is for buses and one is for cars.

Nanjing Road is a well known shopping area and the famous Peace Hotel is there also. The British built it a hundred years ago. Then we headed to the Yu Gardens. It was built during the Ming dynasty in the 1400’s. The gardens are made of stone from other parts of China. It took over 500 years to build them. The entrance is truly amazing with a decorative bridge over water that is filled with huge goldfish. One would think that an emperor would live there, but it was built by a wealthy family and the buildings were where they lived. It even included an opera house that looks like no other opera house that you have ever seen. They sit in the side buildings and watched the performance on the stage.

We got another update on Yu Ming Jian! We have been so fortunate to have so much information about him. He knows that we are here! That makes your heart skip a beat. He has been working with an English tutor one hour a day for the last month. He went shopping and bought two new outfits to bring with him so we are sure that he is very proud of those, can’t wait to see them. He received his last package and he said that he didn’t need the candy and shared it with the kids. That was very funny because that is what I told him to do in the letter we sent him.