There is a lot to recount about the last couple of days.
We went to the EXPO… kind of. We got a late start and arrived at the EXPO around 2:30. It costs Y160 to get it, which is only about $20, but feels like a lot more when you are buying meals for Y10 and the best bao of your life for Y1. The tickets only last until 5pm, so we would only have enough time to see the outsides of things and get some pictures. But that was enough for us.
There was no line, so we sped inside. “AWESOME!” we thought. Once inside, there were no crowds! No lines at the pavilions! Lots of space and plenty of seats and resting places.
We should have known that something was wrong.
Apparently the EXPO is divided into two parts. One part is all of the sweet country pavilions with the crazy buildings, interesting food, fun people, and great photo ops. The other side has all of the corporate pavilions. There is one for the rail system. One for the automotive industry. One for oil. One side is awesome and exciting. One side is boring. Guess which side we were on?
Oh, and did I mention that they are divided BY A RIVER?!
So we thought, “OK, we will cross the river on the ferry.” WRONG! There was a two hour line to get onto the ferry. That would basically give us enough time to get to the exit on the other side before we were forced to buy an expensive evening ticket. So we took a sad picture with the sweet side of the EXPO behind us in the distance, hung our heads, and left.
But we had an even better adventure afterward, and it totally made up for things. I’d read about a cloth market nearby, so we confusedly ambled around a place that we hadn’t been before, turned down a narrow road and were suddenly in the midst of a massive fabric market.
The best part of the whole market were the fish. They sell fish in shallow dishes filled with water so that the fish will live, but are packed together so that they can just be picked up and sold. We saw probably 20 different kinds of fish, eels, frogs, turtles, chickens, ducks, pigeons, and many many other kinds of animals for sale. PETA would not be happy.
Aside from some mild departures, we’ve basically stuck to eating Bao.
Yesterday we went to the Shanghai Museum and the Yuyuan Garden. The museum was nice, and the exhibits were very cool, but the presentation was lacking. I thought that the exhibition style made the things seem more boring than they should have been.
We got dinner at a noodle place that we had tried before. It is good and simple, and the price is right. It is just down the street from our hostel, and the ladies are nice. But last night, it was clear that we were both unwelcome and sitting through the middle of something. They wouldn’t turn us away, and we had already ordered by the time we realized that something was wrong. They only ever smiled to us, but were at each others’ throats (or at least as much so as they would be in front of foreigners). We both feel that we barely made it out of there with our lives.
Today we fly to Shenzhen. We arrive at 10pm, and then have to find our hostel in the middle of the night. We’ll see how that goes.
More pictures!
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