I need to finish China so that I can catch everyone up on life back in the states - things are getting much better thanks to some much needed sleep. Oh, Shanghai seems like so long ago... The kids slept well in the bed together although at some point in the wee early morning hours Indigo woke us up and said "where is my brother" so we kind of panicked thinking he had fallen off the bed until I spotted the dark spot of his head laying across the bottom end of the bed and put him back into a more suitable position. We had a yummy breakfast - so much selection again and met our guide Jimmy at 9:30. Our first stop was the SWFC - Shanghai World Financial Center - to go up to the observation deck. As we crossed over into the financial district, our guide told us that in 1992 (yes, not 1892, but 1992) this whole area was rice paddies. The pictures speak for themselves as to what has happened since then. So we get our tickets to go up this building - which they call the bottle opener - pictures will reveal how it got this name. When the building was completed it was the second tallest in the world and is now the third tallest. However, the SWFC has the tallest observation deck in the world at 1,555 feet. The building is 1,614.2 feet. We first went up to the 97th floor which is the lower part of the observation deck and then we went up to the 100th floor - unbelievable. Yes, those are clear glass floors beneath your feet! As you can see, the kids did not care a whit about the height - can't say the same for myself. Some photos are photos that I took of a screen showing photos so that you can see the inside of the observation deck. There is also a nice shot of our guide Jimmy with the children. We were also able to get a family package shot taken up there so we have a souvenier. Granddad loved this adventure - probably third best after the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors although he'll have to comment if I mispoke. He wished my mom was there because she gets such a kick out of being up high and sat out on the ledge last year of what was the Sears Tower in Chicago - now, he has bragging rights. The other really tall building you see featured a lot is the Jin Mao Tower which was the tallest building until the SWFC was complete. The Jin Mao tower is also the location of our Foley Shanghai office (which we visited the next day). You also see the Pearl Tower featured multiple times with its tall antenna for broadcasting tv and radio. You could also see a lot of smog from that high view. Okay, a word about the toilet photo! From squatty pottys to the fanciest toilet I have seen. This was a public toilet in the SWFC - on the bottom floor where the restaurants and shops are. I took Indigo in and she sat on the seat and she said the seat was hot! Sure enough, it was a heated seat. I have no clue what all the other buttons were for!
From there we went and did a cruise so that we could see the city and also the historic Bund - those of the European style buildings are part of the Bund. Unfortunately, a lot of the Bund is under construction for the World Expo so we did not get to walk around that area. For me, the best part of the cruise was watching the children. Indigo made a little friend in this boy who ended up having popcorn with us and she dragged him around. We went up to the deck outside and she wanted him to come with her so the grandparents brought him up too and then back down - it was very cute. Mom - David took the "Alison" building photo just for you. After that we went to lunch which was excellent. Jimmy made a friend in Indigo when on the lazy susan, in addition to the wonderful Chinese food, there was an entire plate of french fries!
Oh yes, the Expo mascot Hai Bao is everywhere! Indigo loved him and getting a plastic model of him was pretty much the only item that she asked us to buy her the entire time we were in China (except for some Great Wall beverage coasters). The shape of Hai Bao is created from the Chinese character which means people and his name means "treasure of the sea" which is easy to remember, echoes with the color of his body and is a typical lucky name. There is so much symbolism to this mascot that it's quite remarkable. His hair, which has a crest is like the wave of the sea represents his open character and stated the character's birth place is Shanghai. His face shows confidence and is friendly and welcoming. He has big round eyes which show anticipation of the city for the Expo. His color blue shows its latitude and imagination which represent the rising potential of China. His body is round to show being well-off and also lovely and cute. His fist shows a thumbs-up to show appreciation and warm welcome to people. He stands steadily on big feet and opens his arm to embrace the world which shows China has the ability and faith to host a successful Expo - gosh, he sure does represent a lot!
After all this, we went to the Old Town part of Shanghai where there were just swarms of people and the smell of "stinky tofu" everywhere. It was crazy busy - and yes, those are baby sparrows being offered as a delicacy - ugggh. We made our way to the Yu Yuan Garden which was finished in 1577 by an officer in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The word Yu in Chinese means pleasing and satisfying. The officer had it built for his aged parents to make them happy. Over the centuries the garden fell into disarray and part of the land was lost but it was restored in 1956 and reopened in 1961. There are over 40 buildings, ancient trees, ponds, bridges and sculptures. We loved the dragon head where the body draped across the top of the wall. It was beautiful. We also loved the moon and vase gates and notice the two sided split corridor - one side for men and the other for women - note that the right side is for women :-). The furniture you see is made from the Banyan tree. The kids were completely exhausted, but Grandma did a little shopping and bargaining on the way out and then back to our hotel for a very short break. Indigo and Isaac fell asleep and then less than an hour later we had to wake them to go out to meet folks for dinner - it was a hard wake up. We were having dinner with the brother of our dear friend Robyne. Her brother Andy is married to Mency who is from Shanghai and they are now living in Shanghai with their two daughters, Sarah and Hannah (5 1/2 and 7 months respectively). Mency's parents also live with them and her mom joined us. We took two cabs to the restaurant - and arrived safely. It was a lovely place and we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. After Indigo had recovered from being so rudely awoken she had the best time playing with Sarah - they are like two peas in a pod - adventurous and spirited. The dinner was delicious. Mency and her mom ordered really carefully so that not everything would be too spicy for Grandma. Some things were very spicy - I had tears over the fish stew but everything was great - that is chrysanthemum tea in the glass tea pot. You can also view the kitchen - I would have loved to have spent time standing and watching. It was a great night and we were so happy that Andy and his family were glad to meet us. Photos from this busy day here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7322989@N05/sets/72157623437549057/
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
the blog resumes... Xi'an Friday February 19th
Firstly, we're safely home and gradually working our way out of the stupor of the 14 hour time change, getting kids adjusted to some sort of similar sleeping schedule and the realities of life back at home, what no buffet breakfast and twenty different items placed in front of you without effort on a lazy Susan? More on our return home in a later post - in the meantime, we resume with China - were we just there? We continue with Xi'an, a city that we'll have to return to as we simply did not have enough time there.
We rose early after the most dreadful night in our smoke infested room and had a meeting time of 8 a.m. Our suitcases had to be packed and ready to leave for the airport as they were transported there separately - slightly nerve wracking. We had to ensure that our families luggage was correctly all identified to go to Shanghai as Laura Beth's family was returning to Beijing. After that was sorted we went to the Muslim market. China has a Muslim population mostly going back to the Silk Road. I think we were told that in a city of 8 million there are 20,000 Muslim. We absolutely loved the experience of going through the Muslim market and took a bunch of photos of the street food scenes and wares for sale. Since we were so early everything was getting started and people were having breakfast on the street which is apparently quite common. Walking through the market we ended up at the Mosque and you can see the photos from that - see the lotus flower carvings on the ceilings of one of the little gazebo type structures. As you can see the kids all had fun running in the courtyard area. When we walked back Indigo and Isaac enjoyed looking at these birds that were in cages - some kind of singing bird - sad to me, but cute of Indigo with Isaac. We were being hurried along when I think most of us would have loved to have been able to spend a little time shopping or looking - Laura Beth managed to pick up a gorgeous scarf.
We got on the bus thinking we were off to see the Terracotta Warriors which was our primary reason for going ot Xi'an. However, we had another stop, not on the agenda, at a "Jade Museum". I stayed on the bus with the children and my dad went in for a while and did see the different types of Jade- some from mountain and some from river and learned the difference in the value etc. but ultimately it ends in a government run shop - the good thing is you know you're getting the real deal - the bad thing is that it's expensive and the worse thing was that we lost 1.5 hours there which ended up seriously cutting into our time at the warriors so that was a bit irritating - except for the shoppers in the group. I must admit that I ultimately benefited, because after getting to Shanghai, David surprised me with a jade pendent of a peach which is for longjevity - hopefully this means he wants me to stick around. After leaving there we went to lunch and then to the Warriors. The warriors - soldiers and horses, are truly a wonder. They date back to Qin Shi Huang - the first emporer of China. They are dated back to 210 BC! The were first discovered in 1974 by some farmers drilling a well. They comprise warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen and museums. It's estimated that there are 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots and 520 horses, as well as 150 calvary horses. Most are still pits. The figures vary in height from 6' to 6'5 with the generals being the tallest. No two soldiers are alike - which was ordered by the emporer - I think he was about 12-13 when the army first started being made and it's guessed that about 700,000 workers created the army whose purpose was to accompany the emporer to the afterlife so that he could rule another empire in the afterlife. Needless to say, it's fascinating. Flash photos in the pits are not allowed but Pit 1 had really great natural light so the photos came out farely well. Credit to Granddad for the close-ups of faces taken at my request as I had no zoom with me. It would have been nice to have time in the museum but there simply was not time except for a quick peek at the bronze chariots - quite frankly it was so packed with people about 6 people deep around the exhibits that we would not have wanted to stay too long anyway but we wished we had not felt so rushed. The one thing that was truly exciting was that the farmer who found the warriors was there signing books! Apparently this is something he comes and does each Chinese New Year so we were truly lucky. All photo credits of the farmer are thanks to Laura Beth's family - there was a no photo sign but the farmer asked her if she wanted to take a picture so I am snagging those photos. Also, if you're wondering about the photos of Ben and Drew with the Chinese teenagers and of us taking photos of the people photographing them - that was really cute. Ben and Drew were like popstars and the kids wanted to have their photos taken with them so we photographed that and their paparazzi. We raced to the airport where Laura Beth's family had the first flight to Beijing - they made it by a hair and then we caught our flight to Shanghai. You can see that Indigo fell fast asleep on the bus - the positions in which she can sleep are astounding to me. We transported her sleeping in the stroller but then had to wake her up to go through security - both to get her through and to fold the stroller up - what a disaster - she completely fell apart and then fell off the block on which they were wanding her and then Isaac cried hysterically - it was just a big mess, but we coped - barely.
We were met in Shanghai by our new guide Jimmy and were transported to the Crowne Plaza - which was very lovely. After the debaucle in Xi'an we asked Jimmy to call ahead and ensure our room set up was accurate which he did. It was late and we did not want to have problems. Our whole floor was non-smoking - wonderful. The only glitch was that we did not have a crib for Isaac so we called for one which arrived promptly. Well, from the photos you can see that this crib would be on the instant recall list in America, not to mention would probably result in several law suits. We placed Isaac in the crib, and the bottom promptly fell out and he crashed to the floor and got stuck. We retrieved him and decided that he and Indigo would share the double bed. We pushed a chair up to the side to try to prevent him from falling out and put Indigo on the other side with a pillow next to the night stand so she would not bump into the sharp glass corner. I really felt like I had two siblings at that point because Indigo would say "he is not going to sleep" to which I would respond, "well, neither are you" and then she would say he was touching her and then he would mess with her hair but ultimately sleep overtook them both and I was very excited to get a picture of our two babies asleep together. I don't think I mentioned this in Beijing, but we had crib failure there too. The crib was delivered and we could see that it looked like an Ikea special with pieces of wood not quite fitting together and the next night about 4 or more spindles just completely fell out. Our solution was to turn it around so that the gaping hole in the side of the crib was against the wall and that worked out for the rest of the stay there. Something to be said for American crib standards even though plenty here still seem to manage to be recalled. See photos from Xi'an and crib tale here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7322989@N05/sets/72157623537757296/
We rose early after the most dreadful night in our smoke infested room and had a meeting time of 8 a.m. Our suitcases had to be packed and ready to leave for the airport as they were transported there separately - slightly nerve wracking. We had to ensure that our families luggage was correctly all identified to go to Shanghai as Laura Beth's family was returning to Beijing. After that was sorted we went to the Muslim market. China has a Muslim population mostly going back to the Silk Road. I think we were told that in a city of 8 million there are 20,000 Muslim. We absolutely loved the experience of going through the Muslim market and took a bunch of photos of the street food scenes and wares for sale. Since we were so early everything was getting started and people were having breakfast on the street which is apparently quite common. Walking through the market we ended up at the Mosque and you can see the photos from that - see the lotus flower carvings on the ceilings of one of the little gazebo type structures. As you can see the kids all had fun running in the courtyard area. When we walked back Indigo and Isaac enjoyed looking at these birds that were in cages - some kind of singing bird - sad to me, but cute of Indigo with Isaac. We were being hurried along when I think most of us would have loved to have been able to spend a little time shopping or looking - Laura Beth managed to pick up a gorgeous scarf.
We got on the bus thinking we were off to see the Terracotta Warriors which was our primary reason for going ot Xi'an. However, we had another stop, not on the agenda, at a "Jade Museum". I stayed on the bus with the children and my dad went in for a while and did see the different types of Jade- some from mountain and some from river and learned the difference in the value etc. but ultimately it ends in a government run shop - the good thing is you know you're getting the real deal - the bad thing is that it's expensive and the worse thing was that we lost 1.5 hours there which ended up seriously cutting into our time at the warriors so that was a bit irritating - except for the shoppers in the group. I must admit that I ultimately benefited, because after getting to Shanghai, David surprised me with a jade pendent of a peach which is for longjevity - hopefully this means he wants me to stick around. After leaving there we went to lunch and then to the Warriors. The warriors - soldiers and horses, are truly a wonder. They date back to Qin Shi Huang - the first emporer of China. They are dated back to 210 BC! The were first discovered in 1974 by some farmers drilling a well. They comprise warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen and museums. It's estimated that there are 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots and 520 horses, as well as 150 calvary horses. Most are still pits. The figures vary in height from 6' to 6'5 with the generals being the tallest. No two soldiers are alike - which was ordered by the emporer - I think he was about 12-13 when the army first started being made and it's guessed that about 700,000 workers created the army whose purpose was to accompany the emporer to the afterlife so that he could rule another empire in the afterlife. Needless to say, it's fascinating. Flash photos in the pits are not allowed but Pit 1 had really great natural light so the photos came out farely well. Credit to Granddad for the close-ups of faces taken at my request as I had no zoom with me. It would have been nice to have time in the museum but there simply was not time except for a quick peek at the bronze chariots - quite frankly it was so packed with people about 6 people deep around the exhibits that we would not have wanted to stay too long anyway but we wished we had not felt so rushed. The one thing that was truly exciting was that the farmer who found the warriors was there signing books! Apparently this is something he comes and does each Chinese New Year so we were truly lucky. All photo credits of the farmer are thanks to Laura Beth's family - there was a no photo sign but the farmer asked her if she wanted to take a picture so I am snagging those photos. Also, if you're wondering about the photos of Ben and Drew with the Chinese teenagers and of us taking photos of the people photographing them - that was really cute. Ben and Drew were like popstars and the kids wanted to have their photos taken with them so we photographed that and their paparazzi. We raced to the airport where Laura Beth's family had the first flight to Beijing - they made it by a hair and then we caught our flight to Shanghai. You can see that Indigo fell fast asleep on the bus - the positions in which she can sleep are astounding to me. We transported her sleeping in the stroller but then had to wake her up to go through security - both to get her through and to fold the stroller up - what a disaster - she completely fell apart and then fell off the block on which they were wanding her and then Isaac cried hysterically - it was just a big mess, but we coped - barely.
We were met in Shanghai by our new guide Jimmy and were transported to the Crowne Plaza - which was very lovely. After the debaucle in Xi'an we asked Jimmy to call ahead and ensure our room set up was accurate which he did. It was late and we did not want to have problems. Our whole floor was non-smoking - wonderful. The only glitch was that we did not have a crib for Isaac so we called for one which arrived promptly. Well, from the photos you can see that this crib would be on the instant recall list in America, not to mention would probably result in several law suits. We placed Isaac in the crib, and the bottom promptly fell out and he crashed to the floor and got stuck. We retrieved him and decided that he and Indigo would share the double bed. We pushed a chair up to the side to try to prevent him from falling out and put Indigo on the other side with a pillow next to the night stand so she would not bump into the sharp glass corner. I really felt like I had two siblings at that point because Indigo would say "he is not going to sleep" to which I would respond, "well, neither are you" and then she would say he was touching her and then he would mess with her hair but ultimately sleep overtook them both and I was very excited to get a picture of our two babies asleep together. I don't think I mentioned this in Beijing, but we had crib failure there too. The crib was delivered and we could see that it looked like an Ikea special with pieces of wood not quite fitting together and the next night about 4 or more spindles just completely fell out. Our solution was to turn it around so that the gaping hole in the side of the crib was against the wall and that worked out for the rest of the stay there. Something to be said for American crib standards even though plenty here still seem to manage to be recalled. See photos from Xi'an and crib tale here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7322989@N05/sets/72157623537757296/
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