Shanghai with Hui

Sooo, I know it has been a while since I have used this blog. Lately I have been focusing on school, immersing myself in Chinese culture, and playing a lot of video games. I still definitely want to share all of my photos online, so I guess the next set of photos comes from a visit to Shanghai that I made with Hui. I have to say, that outing to Shanghai was much more fruitful and interesting than the first one.
      I think we definitely spent our three day vacation for the Chinese holiday 端午节(duanwujie dragon boat festival) if not in style, at least with like a good chunk of the country's population. Not sure if you know this about Shanghai, but I'm pretty sure that every restroom in the city has like a twenty minute wait warning sign posted outside (I completely made that up). Pushing through solid blocks of people is pretty fun too. Yeah, it seems my opinions have changed a little bit since the time I actually took this trip. These days I enjoy life in Hangzhou whenever I get to stay there. Great history, great scenery, great people, great city, but you know, its still fun to go to Shanghai sometimes. I don't regret going to the big attractions......though I don't think I'd do it again, because I was really not digging feeling like I was in a human trash compactor. lol
    The first thing we did was visit 豫园(yuyuan), which is a big garden, and about the only traditional Chinese thing we could find in Shanghai. This was before I started taking pictures of the English explanations for my family, and it was almost a year ago, so I don't really remember what this place was all about. I feel bad! I think this time Hui and I just wanted to walk around and see beautiful things.

 We ate breakfast/ lunch in a world famous restaurant with a nice long wait named 南翔小笼馒头。We wanted to try a kind of traditional Shanghai food called 汤包(aka baozi with soup inside). You can see from the picture, that this is a big fried baozi filled with soup that you drink out of it from a straw. It was fun to try, but at $5 a piece for just one baozi, they were pretty expensive, so we just shared one. Because on this holiday Chinese traditionally eat 粽子(sticky rice in leaf), we ordered one of those too, but it was super tiny. My review: food was great, but woah expensive! You are definitely paying the famous food price. haha I can't remember the price of everything, just that the tangbaos were 35 kuai. We finished our meal off with an order of another one of Shanghai's famous foods, 小笼包(little dragon dumplings), which are dumplings that have meat and a little soup inside.

The outside of Yuyuan had a lot of shops and street food. It was my first time to see so much street food in one place, so I decided to try something I wouldn't normally even dream of eating, deep fried soft shelled crab. I have to say, they waited a little too long to kill it after it got soft! This crab was very very crunchy, and so oily, but what do you expect when you are eating deep fried stuff. Hui decided to go with breaded and deep fried prawns, and they were soft and delicious. Afterwards, we continued our healthy dinner by heading over to McDonald's (HAHAHA), where Hui bought me a happy meal, that came with a toy that I was really excited to send to my cousins.

Inside Yuyuan was very pretty, and there were so many great things to see.

It seems like I really enjoy taking pictures of different shaped doorways. That's not a bad thing though, the Chinese are very creative with those.

He looks so happy!

Love the silly translations here.

Not all beauty is man made!

We walked through some craft shops inside Yuyuan. I just love the awesome things that you see made from jade. One is a popular summer fruit called 荔枝(lizhi), and another is....well we argued about weather it is a lion or a shih tzu. haha It looks exactly like my cousin's dog cocoa, so I'll let you all be the judge.

      Next we went to visit the 东方明珠塔(oriental pearl tower). That is definitely #1 on my lists of things you should only do once in your life. There were soooooooo many people!

      We were literally smashed against the walls when we got up to the top, but it was worth it for the great view.

      A little farther down they had a sky deck, where you could take pictures standing on top of a giant window. It was scary and fun. Since I came to China, I have found that I'm a little bit braver than I thought I was. I gladly agreed to things that before I thought I would say NOOOOOPE to. This was actually really fun, and a great place to take pictures, so not bad at all. Actually, I would say yes to something like this, but I did in fact turn down a chance to get a foot massage, because I thought it would be weird. I don't even know.

    The ticket also included an old Shanghai museum that was on the ground floor of the tower, that was really fun too!

Hui said he used to sit in one of those when he was a kid. It is to keep kids warm in the winter.

a woman making tofu

cricket fighting

can you find us?

.......afterwards we were onto our next place, which was one I was really excited about.

      If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of Disney, so you can bet that hearing that a new Disney store opened in Shanghai got me super hyped for the opening of Shanghai Disney! This Disney store is the largest one in the world, and the first one in China. These days you can buy the official Shanghai Disneyland merchandise in the store, and, according to an information sheet from in their shopping bag, 90% of the items in the store are sold exclusively in this store. We went there a week after it opened, and there was about a five minute line to get in. In the center of the place was a giant castle, that looked like the one they were building in Disneyland. Outside a clock tower was under construction, which has now finally been completed. It seems like every month they redecorate the place, so I will have to post some updates whenever I visit!

      I ended up buying a tsum tsum for my sister, and giving the bag to my best friend, who is just as big a Disney lover as I am. After that fun stuff we met up with some friends and had a nice dinner double date at Pizza Hut. It was a nice way to end a lovely day. By the way, I know I got something wrong in the chronological order here, because this was two days, not one.......oh well. Either way, Shanghai is a nice place to visit, and it is going to be even better when Disneyland opens.