Postcard from Shanghai

From Karen 4/7/2008

Well, I shared with many my nightmares about flying back to join the ship, and the ship not being there for me. Luckily, this did not happen, and Jim was there to greet me in Hong Kong. Not so for the kids here in Shanghai!

Most of the students (almost 700 of them) flew north from Hong Kong to visit Beijing and the Great Wall of China (they said it was… great!) and planned to rejoin the ship in Shanghai. The ship was due to dock at 4am Monday morning, and we were told that we would be awakened at 5am to go through the Customs drill. Well, the fog had other plans for us…

Sunday night was pea soup fog (actually more like cream of potato soup), and the port of Shanghai was closed to all traffic. We sat out at sea most all day Monday, waiting for the okay to dock. This was the first day of the whole voyage where there were no plans for us – we slept in and called it our “snow day”, and they showed “The Little Mermaid” and “Little Miss Sunshine” on the room TVs over and over for those who could think of nothing else to do!

We finally got the okay to proceed in the late afternoon, and started chugging toward the harbor in still somewhat foggy weather. (Our ship navigates totally automatically, and we could have docked in the fog, but we risked running over all the smaller vessels that don’t have our navigational equipment.) We navigated up the river and actually docked about 7:30 in the evening, much to the relief of the hundreds of students sitting at the port on their backpacks!

So, that left us only one day to see Shanghai.

4/8/2008

We set out early this morning in our raingear (it drizzled on and off throughout the day), and found an ATM with western characters so that we could get some money (1 US dollar = 6.9 yuan). We had pared down our original plans and decided to visit one area of the city only. We took a cab (with an automated English voice recording that greeted us with “welcome to Take Me taxi”) to the Yuyuan Gardens. The cab driver stopped at a busy city intersection, with not one green thing to be seen, and motioned that we had arrived. We got out and looked around, but nothing looked vaguely garden-like, nor were there any signs, so we started walking down the old cobblestone / pedestrian only street.

We were immediately accosted by street sellers offering us Rolex watches, Prada shoes, and Louis Vuitton bags (I didn’t understand the first dozen who asked us, but figured out what they were offering after a while). These goods were not actually to be seen, but the sellers had brochures with pictures of what they would look like if we just followed them… luckily my taste does not run to Prada (now if they were offering Birkenstocks….)

We passed shops offering every imaginable kind of stuff, and lots of yummy smelling food (my favorite had a sign that read, “Dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crad”), but no gardens. We came upon the Temple of the City God, which was on our list of things to see, so we stopped in there first. The City God of Shanghai is Qin Yu Bo, who ran the city in the 14^th century and was made a god after his death. Sacrifices of incense are made to him to safeguard the city and its inhabitants. As with other Asian temples, there are also a variety of other gods available to venerate with incense, and many shrines all within the temple walls, which took up a city block.

After leaving the temple we came upon a man selling postcards of the Yuyuan Gardens, and after several failed communication attempts, Jim got him to point us in the direction of the Gardens. They were well worth the search; built in 1559, they were very different from the gardens in Hong Kong. The gardens consisted of rockery, water features, bridges, small buildings, and the occasional well placed tree. Wherever we turned, there was another path to follow, and another perspective to see. Beautiful. Peaceful.

When hunger beckoned, we went in search of yummy food, and feasted on dumplings, tofu, green and red peppers and (my favorite) noodles. I don’t think we had any “ovaries of crad”, but there’s no way of really knowing, is there?

We spent the remainder of the afternoon meandering in and out of little shops, bargaining for souvenirs and enjoying the ambiance. We bumped into many of the students, who were snatching up the last “bargains” of our voyage. We don’t think there will be many bargains in Japan or Honolulu…