One of China's not as enormous cities
Tianjin construction
Tianjin power plant? There were so many of these that it seems bizarre that they could all be power plants. I can only make out the three characters from this photo: Tianjin (city name) dian (electric).
And some more countryside/city/village, I don't remember where this was.
Ms. Liang was glad to hear that I thought Beijing was cleaner than Shanghai. Also she had her driver help me get a refund for someone who cheated me on my cell phone service. It was a matter of saving face for China, not just saving me money (and allowing me to keep my old number), she said.
But Shanghai is the focus of this post. It was a fun-filled trip that I will try to explain in a brief narrative/chronology of what went down. We'll see if this gets boring or not.
The train...was fine. I slept the whole way (it was a night train) so I didn't see anything on the way. There was raucous foot smell for a little bit, which I originally blamed on one of the three other guys that was sleeping in my compartment, but once I moved my dirty sock from near my pillow it was fine. I had been caught in a very sudden, very ferocious downpour on my way to the subway which led to smelly feet. Eventful.
As I made my way to my hotel, first via metro and then via walking, I spied some men in kilts standing outside a hotel. Once I walked way past that hotel and turned around to go back and find the hotel I was staying at, I realized that was my hotel. I smiled sheepishly for the much of the time I spent in my room. For the cost of a cheap American hotel I was staying in this pleasant historic hotel, on the top floor, with a king size bed, and views of the famous Pudong skyline and Shanghai's Bund area. Spent my first day checking out the Bund, the famous Nanjing Road, and the Rockbund Museum which had an excellent exhibit of machines (robots, flying things, submarines (many of which functioned)) made by peasants. No joke excellent and really memorable.
The Bund was funny. First a guy wanted to pose in a picture with me (the novelty of a foreigner (maybe the weird glasses too)), and then a Chinese family was setting up their toddler to pose with two black toddlers. The children looked like they were confused by all of the cooing at them, but the Chinese parents were exciting to see their children with these foreign children. I'm sure the black mother/white father added to the novelty of the event.
Wandered into the evening and then crawled into my enormous bed, sprawled wildly in an effort to take up as much space as possible, and went to sleep to prepare for an early start to the expo. The peaceful large groups of Taiji old people led to the wild subway, which led to a long, long, long queue. I was luckily near enough to the front of the line so that after an hour and a half of waiting I was in not long past the 9 o'clock opening time. The expo is big. 300,000 people I think is a light day, 500,000 is a heavy traffic day. After the Chinese Provinces Joint Pavilion and the Pakistan Pavilion, I went to Poland where I met a Chinese Portuguese friend and a girl from Guangzhou? who I ended up going around with for the rest of the day. 12 hours passed, my feet hurt a little. That was that. Spain has an enormous robot baby, a highlight. I also ate a fast food ostrich pita.
The second day, after not enough sleep, I was back at it, this time for fourteen hours. This time on my own, which was quite liberating. America was pretty lacking. Some corny videos, but they still made me homesick. On three big screens Tony Hawk and Kobe Bryant were on either side of Hillary Clinton welcoming us to the USA Pavilion. Our president spoke a little too, of course. One of the better pavilions was Mexico's. Instead of a bad photo collage or corny advertisement/movie it was more like an art museum. And they had a restaurant. So I ate a very expensive, not quite ideal burrito. But enjoyed it nonetheless. Also enjoyed seeing so many Chinese people in the Mexican restaurant. I miss Mexico in China. The distance is too apparent. If anyone isn't thankful to have Mexico as a neighbor, they need to come to China for a while. They will miss their Mexican neighbors.
So that day ended. And I returned home to sprawl back into bed once again, thinking I would not return to the wild expo again. But then the next day I realized I was addicted and ended up buying an evening ticket, though I spent much of the evening in the park by the river, the relaxing river walk part of the expo. Quite the lights and the action on the other side of the river, though I never made it over there. That was the business' area of the expo. The next morning I was back on the train for 10 hours back to Shanghai, this time in daylight so that I could see the country side. The train was fast, the pictures difficult to take, but I did take a few for the benefit of my friends and family. Please enjoy, four are posted above. The guy I sat next to on the train told me he waited seven hours to get into the China Pavilion. I never made it in to China's pavilion because 1. you needed a reservation 2. apparently a seven hour wait was necessary.
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