Introduction

Ellie, Jodi, Kyle and I rendezvoused in Shanghai on July 6, to spend a month together frolicking in China.  We hadn’t seen each other in a year – Kyle is going to school in England now (in fact, he changed his citizenship from American to British) and the girls have been in Kentucky for the school year with their mom. Their planes arrived in Shanghai Pudong International Airport within the same hour of each other, thanks to the fortunate delay of the girls United Airlines flight from Chicago and the early arrival of

Kyle’s Lufthansa flight from Europe!

The girls flew alone for the first time, I was so proud that they did that!  And Kyle did too, but of course, at the age of 18, he is now a seasoned world traveler, having traveled alone throughout the world since he was around 7 years old.

Then we took the bullet train from the airport to Lu Jiazui, where we got off and took a taxi the rest of the way to our hotel.   We were pretty impressed that the train reached a speed of up to 430 Km/hour!  The only downside to such speed is that the view out the window was blurred most of the way, haha!

About 2 pm we reached our home for the next 5 days, the International Shengheng Peninsula Hotel.   The hotel is a 4-star hotel, really quite nice, with large rooms, a pool, 3 restaurants (one at the 26th floor with a great view of the Bund and river).  It is only a 5 minute walk to the Bund and only about a 20 min walk to People’s Square and Nanjing Lu shopping street and Yuyuan Gardens tourist attraction.  The only problem is there is a lot of construction currently underway for the 2010 Expo, so the area around the hotel is full of inconvenient detours, piles of rubble and noisy 24/7 machinery and blasting.  We enjoyed swimming in the pool, lounging around the lobby and goofing off in our room during our stay, when we too tired and hot to be traipsing around Shanghai. 

One of the first things the girls had to to do upon arrival in China was learn how to use chopsticks.  As you can see, Jodi is not even that proficient in using a fork!!But after just a day of practice, she managed to master it pretty well. She enjoyed the local fried noodles, but prefers fried rice even more.

Oriental Pearl Tower 

Our first stop the next day was the Oriental Pearl Tower, just one subway  stop away from our hotel

across the river (in fact, we had a pretty good view of the Pearl Tower from our hotel window!) . The day was hot and sticky, but we didn’t care, we were excited to be together in Shanghai and the girls had been waiting months to go up to the top of the tower.  The day was not so clear, it was kinda hazy, but nonetheless, we still couldn’t wait to get to the top.  Lucky for us, there was only a short line and wait to get a ticket and get up the tower. The  Pearl Tower was opened in the mid-1980s, and is the 3rd highest tower in the world.  It is the most futuristic one (in my opinion), looking like a kind of “space needle” ready to take off with a big blast of orange fire.  Once we got into the tower, Ellie and Jodi immediately attracted the attention of the tourists there – they spent more time pointing and staring at Jodi and Ellie than they did at the Shanghai skyline outside the windows; many of them took pictures with the girls –if I was at all entrepreneurial, I would have made enough money that morning to pay for our Shanghai holiday, haha!

Anyway, despite the doting crowds of tourists snapping pictures of my famous daughters, we still managed to fight our way through the crowd of adoring fans and take in the striking Shanghai skyline.  Although the day was hazy, it was still quite amazing view.        After we viewed the skyline, we took the elevator back down to the  bottom floor, where there is a historical museum, snack stores and souvenir shops. Ellie enjoyed a sumptuous mango gelato, while Jodi and I opted for the Belgian chocolate.  We even managed to snap some pictures in front of the Great Wall (who knew the Great Wall extended all the way to Shanghai??).   All in all, it was a nice morning spent at the Oriental Pearl Tower.

The Aquarium

The next day  we went to the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, one of the world’s largest and most modern.   It also has the largest underwater glass enclosed tunnel with a moving sidewalk, that slowly transports you through the eerie “deep” ocean filled with sharks, manta rays, exotic fish and who knows what else.   The aquarium has a series of exhibits from different parts of the world, including a large exhibit at the beginning of the tour about all the fishes of the Yangtze River, another one about poisonous and dangerous fishes, and various regions of the world such as the Amazon, Africa, North American and polar regions.       

  There is also a kind of “save the sharks” exhibit that puts a nice spin on the importance of sharks in the ecological balance of the sea, and describes the dangers of catching too many sharks and destroying this balance.  Did you know that more than 40 million sharks are harvested each year, much of it illegally or as the by-product of fishing for other animals?  Interestingly, the exhibit also educates the Chinese public that the so called “healthy delicacy” of eating shark fin soup is neither healthy for consumers or for sharks and warns against this practice.

Science and Technology Museum

The Science and Technology museum is located next to Century Park, Shanghai’s largest and most beautiful park.  In my eyes, it is also the most modern, well-planned area of Shanghai, with a careful balance of commercial, residential, entertainment and parks.  The roads are wide, traffic control is excellent and it is quite a feast of architectural delights dotting the area.  In fact, the area around the museum reminded me of Brasilia, the futuristic planned capital city of Brazil.  The museum itself is a sprawling futuristic buildingr made of glass and steel, with large walkways, huge hallways and a multitude of exhibit areas spread out among 4 floors.   There are several theatres and learning centers too, perfect for kids interested in nature, science and technology, with some hands-on activities, such as  handling robots, getting your portrait made by a robot using a laser pen, riding a virtual bicycle in the countryside (you can even choose an easy versus challenging course (Ellie inadvertently chose the challenge course), and a space training chair that moves you around in all directions.  Unfortunately, there was very little English explanations and all the movies (such as about the Chinese space program, endangered species, of the Theory of Relativity were all exclusively in Chinse), so we did not learn or experience but a fraction of what was available due to our language barrier.  They had a large exhibit about various kinds of animals, we thought this was pretty disappointing, cuz all the animals were stuffed or big fake-looking replicas (although the settings were realistic recreations, perhaps perfectly suited for a Hollywood movie set!).      

But for me, the highlight of the museum was the genetics section – there they had a preserved copy of a genetically engineered mouse with a human ear grown on its back – totally gross!!!    the first one you see there on the left is the not so perfect one, since the ear is all furry; but look at the scientific “beauty of that second ear – if I did not know better, I would think that was my ear lying on that mouse!

Other Fun Stuff

We also did some other fun stuff while we were in Shanghai.  For example, we had dinner at a Brazilian barbeque restaurant with our Nigerian friend, Kevin.  It was kind of buffet style, where you get up and choose the salad items or veggies you want, and then the waiter comes around every 2 minutes bringing a rack of some kind of meat, ranging from beef, pork, lamb, cow tongue, liver and other meaty body parts. . . .  We went to the IMAX theater near Nanjing Lu and watched Transformers one evening.  Since the theater was conveniently located in the same building as the Hershey chocolate outlet, I decided to buy each of us a delicious rich, fattening and totally unhealthy slice of cake –ummmmm – soo delicious!!    We also spent “down time” goofing off in our hotel, playing music, games drawing pictures, and (unfortunately) finishing grading my final exams (which I had to drag with me to Shanghai from Jimei).  But all the time we spent doing these things was fun.       

Finally, on July 11, it was time to fly to my humble home in Jimei, where we opened the next chapter of our hOt CoOl SuMmEr 2009!.