Day 9: 1st day in Shang Hai!!!

We were in Shanghai!!! We started off the day at the Shanghai museum. The building was four stories and each level had about two exhibits, there was Jade carvings, seals, calligraphy, sculpture, pottery, ink paintings, furniture, and clothing from the different regions of China. I wasn't impressed with the ink paintings than I thought I would but the other exhibits were interesting. I found the traditional clothing the most interesting, there was even one suit made out of salmon skin. Also, the furniture was extremely ornate, like one piece would have taken half a lifetime to carve. Craziness!

 

 Sadly, I've seen better. but still cool

I have no idea how they did this but this has salmon skin all over it!

We left the museum to head to one of the trips sponsors and here is a good story for all of you. So our ttrip was extremely cheap and part of that reason was because of the sponsers and that is exactly what our guide explained to us as we went to this Jade factory. Yes, we already been to a jade factory but again they are a sponsor. Also our guide wasn't allowed to come up with us. yeah, already sketchy.

It started out innocent enough, in the lobby they had a big statue of a baby dragon called a pichu. If you put your money in its mouth it will protect it and give you good fortune.

That was fun, and we all had the chance to do it. Then they brought us upstairs and they had another jade presentation talking about the quality of jade and such then they started selling to us. They were not nice about it though, kinda stuck up to some of us and the others in our group they were very pushy. I offhandedly glanced at a bangle and a salesgirl saw that and tried to get me interested in them more. She did this by trying to get one on my arm, well I have larger hands than their used to but that didn't deter the girl one bit. She slathered my hand in lotion and tried to force it on, multiple times. Well, it started to hurt so I told her no. She kept coming back and trying again and I kept telling her no, but she wouldn't listen. Finally, my sister got angry and yelled at her to stop. I gratefully escaped after that and went out to the bus. It turned out okay though cause they had a good bathroom :)

The next area we went to was the Bund. This was the area where the foreigners took over for their buiness, before they all moved to HongKong. All the buildings are very European style and the whole strip was filled with very expensive shops. But a very fun area and you could see the center island that had all the skyscrapers that had been built over the past ten years.

 This was fun, mainly cause people would stop us and take pictures of us.

None of those skyscrapers existed about ten years ago.

We then went to the Bazaar, and it was cool. It felt very traditional Chinese; the shops were all in these big beautiful buildings and there were shops everywhere!

It was also super fun just to go shopping! We could bargain here and it was fun just to see how low you could get them to go, even though it was basically cheap junk. But there were a few treasures we found and the experience was worth it all. We had dinner here too, dumplings filled with soup that was sooo delicious!

We had to get to our last activity so we didn't get that much time at the Bazaar, but during our free day tomorrow we are coming back so no worries.

The last major activity we did was go to Era. It is an acrobatic show much like cirque de Soliel. It was amazing to see. There were multiple acts and many I am not sure how they did what they did. There was hoop jumping, porcelain bowl juggling, contortionists and other amazing acts. The contortionists were four girls and I don't think they had spines cause they bent double on top of each other. They would make pyramids while bending in half! Then the finally was a gigantic metal ball, where they drove eight motorcycles inside it without dying.
We weren't allowed to take pictures, but my Dad doesn't listen to rules like that:

They stuck eight moving motorcycles in that ball behind the performers!

Oh it was crazy, but crazy good, I'm really happy we got to see it, we were a little late getting there and I wasn't sure if we were going to make it in. No worries though.

That's all for today, till next time.