We’re in China now! The flight to Canada was pretty easy, and the Toronto airport is super nice! There were iPads at pretty much every table, and the food was pretty good too. A couple of us had hamburgers and fries for our “last supper”.
After the incredibly arduous 14+ hour flight, we were finally in China. After going through customs (where, as obnoxious American tourists, we cut in line), we were greeted by a nice little Chinese man called Wu Ge (Brother Wu). You can see him showing us a map of Shanghai, and his little red flag at the bottom of the escalator. He escorted us to our bus where we loaded our checked baggage underneath it. He then took us to the MagLev train; what’s special about the MagLev is that it’s suspended on a magnetic field, so there’s virtually no friction. This allows it to reach speeds up to 300+ km/hr (roughly 186 mi/hr). We covered the ~30 km trip to the city Shanghai in ~8 minutes. In the words of Griffin, “it was quiche though.”
After getting to Shanghai, we got to explore the Bund. The Bund is a riverside area where one side has European looking architecture left over from the French occupation. We got to walk around a bit, which was especially nice after sitting on a plane for so long. We also got dinner at a restaurant in the Bund – it was delicious! The chief conversation topic at my table was bathroom facilities. Yum. I don’t have any pictures of said facilities, but the term “squatty potty” should be sufficiently self explanatory.
Once we finished dinner, we went on a river cruise of the Bund. However, before we had a chance to actually board the boat, we were swarmed by people trying to sell us things. Some people ended up getting selfie sticks, and someone got a really powerful laser (that is apparently illegal in America?). While on the boat, we got to see Shanghai’s skyscrapers lit up with various colors, patterns, and messages. Towards the end of the cruise, we started dropping like flies as the exhaustion really hit. By 8:00, I felt like (and probably looked) like death warmed over. We drove back to the hotel, which was actually a somewhat harrowing experience given how people drive in Shanghai, took showers, and went to bed. Now I’m going to stop writing this blog post and go to bed myself!
Sending our love from Shanghai,
Anna and the rest of the CA Chinese class