Last Little Bits of Shanghai

Whew! Unfortunately for me I forgot that last post, so I'm having to play catch-up now. Just so we're on the same page here (the days blur together for me, at least, especially nearing the end here), my last few posts have covered Xi'an and most of Shanghai, up to the 21st. What follows are the events of the 22nd through the 24th. This will probably be the last big post, because it's mostly classes and open afternoons from here on out (though we are taking a day trip to Tianjin on the 29th). Allons-y!

We set off in the morning for Zhouzhuang (bright and early, since we had a drive ahead of us). Zhouzhuang is known as a water town, and has been called the Venice of Asia. There aren't any roads, only sidewalks and waterways (like Venice!). It was really pretty, and there were some new shops to see as well (new things being sold, actually). I will definitely be posting more from Zhouzhuang once February rolls around.
After Zhouzhuang we headed to Suzhou. Now, you're aware of the Silk Road, and Silk Alley, and how China developed the process of actually manufacturing silk goods? Suzhou is where it all comes from. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, or at least not historically correct, but Suzhou is the cradle of Chinese silk-making. If you're unaware, silk is made from the cocoons of silkworms (who would have thought?). Silkworms grow incredibly fast, their whole lifespans lasting about 60 days, and most of that eating whatever mulberry leaf they happen upon. It takes a newborn worm about 25 days to mature and begin spinning its cocoon. The cocoons take about 36 hours to make, and once they're done they'll metamorphosize into an adult moth, then break out of their cocoon to mate, lay eggs, and die (out in the wild, at least). In factories, once the cocoons are spun, they are plucked from the branches and cooked in boiling water to kill the worm and dissolve the natural adhesive the worms use in spinning the cocoons. Then they are dried and sorted; if any are discolored or damaged, they are discarded. Then they go into another steamy bath and get brushed by a machine. This gentle brushing starts to dislodge the silk, and the loose end sticks to the bristles. Once the ends are collected, the move on to unspinning machines, which rapidly pull the thread off the cocoons and weave it into silk thread at the same time (that's the machine on Flickr). This silk thread is spooled, then shipped off for dyeing and whatever else it's destined for. The accompanying shop was naturally overpriced, and we left shortly after our tour to go to Suzhou's famous gardens. All I can say is that they were gorgeous. Most of my pictures are going to come from here and the Yuan gardens, simply because I can't really put it into words. It was so meditative and tranquil, just slowly walking along those stone paths and looking at the old buildings. I suppose it wasn't really so much the beauty of the gardens as it was being there, having a place to just let your mind meander as you did. I'd always try and drift off in a different direction from the group so I didn't have people talking history and asking questions, and there were always interesting places to find, if you take the time to look. That's all very Taoist of me, I know :P Just look forward to those pictures, I might have been able to capture it...
After the gardens we boarded up on the bus and took the long ride back. I got some pork fried rice from a street vendor (it's safe, trust me, and it's definitely cheaper than a restaurant: 8 kuai for a nice serving, which equals about $1.25).

I can see this is going to be another long one already... The *next* day (we're on the 23rd now, last day in Shanghai) I went with a few other people over to Shanghai's version of Silk Alley and looked around there. It was mostly clothing stores, so I didn't buy anything, but it was still fun to walk around. We grabbed lunch at a street vendor outside and took a cab to the Pudong area. There is a river that runs through Shanghai called the Pu river. The words for east and west in Chinese are "dong" and "xi", respectively. So the Puxi area (where the hotel is) is on the west side of the river, while the Pudong area is on the east (the Chinese are good at giving things easy names). Anyways, the Pudong area has all of Shanghai's magnificent skyscrapers, and we decided to go up the Pearl Tower (you can see it in the picture I took at night; it's the one with the three orbs, or pearls, going up). The view was really impressive from up there, got several good pictures of the skyline. We spent an hour and a half in the tower's revolving restaurant, sipping overpriced cappucino and watching the view. Then we made our way down and headed across the street to a huge shopping mall. I have to say I was a little disappointed, and I laughed to myself when I realized why. All of the stores were Western, or trying to be, and there was all this open space, like in American malls. I realized that if I was going to go shopping in China, I wanted to be squeezing past people in little hallways with vendors yelling things like, "Rolex? Buy watch? Bag? Give you good price." Haggling, too. I'm going to miss that coming back. It's a lot more fun when you can bring a shopkeeper down from some outrageously high price to an outrageously low one. A lot more fun than just handing the cashier a coupon, at least... Anyways, I digress. We wandered the mall and I grabbed something to eat at KFC (I know! I can get that here, I sound like a hypocrite, but I just wanted something easy, and didn't feel like finding something around our hotel again). We took cabs back to the hotel and I used up the last hour or so of internet, then chilled for a while and went to bed. We left that morning and got back here with enough time to settle in before dinner.

Alright, all caught up! My posts will no longer be retroactive, since I have internet in my room here. The 26th is New Years (also known as the Spring Festival since that's when winter starts to end and people prepare for the coming spring) so expect a lot of culture then :P It's the year of the Ox ("niu" in Chinese), so I wish you all a Happy Niu Year! :)