the china chronicles 4 -- shanghai

so remember the bug drama and how my roommate promised she would scream if a bug landed on her face while she slept? it turns out that she makes noises in her sleep and that i might or might not have misinterpreted that as screaming at 5:08 am. but unlike a good friend, i just lay in bed for awhile, wondering if that was seriously a cry for help and why she wasn't flailing around the room because i knew she hated bugs. so i looked over, discovered that she was just stretching or something and still sleeping and NOT covered in bugs, and went back to sleep.

we woke up early and ate at the hotel buffet. i love hotel buffets. they are so neat and clean and organized. don't get me wrong, i like the cultural food too and the experience of eating legit regional food but hey. i also love breakfast on white plates with placemats and five different kinds of fruit juice and bacon and danishes.

[the hangzhou hotel buffet was much more impressive, but heyy. you took what you got.]

then we were off for our main objective in shanghai, which was the world expo. we subwayed there, which was practical for maybe more practical for one or two people but not a group of 11 with a small kid and four confused adults.

but we got there and i found that we had to walk a mile or so before we even got IN the place. this was intense. obviously walking around was the theme and my shoes were already half-dead. so it was like china walking vs. my shoes and we would see who came out victorious.

the expo for those who don't know are a bunch of buildings with exhibits inside depending on who set them up. they're called pavillions. there were country pavillions, company pavillions, and miscellaneous ones like the ones about city planning and stuff.

we went into at least like thirty that day... i can't even remember them all. we only went into the ones that didn't have a huge line, so that meant some of the smaller ones like belarus, slovenia, bosnia/herzegovina, you know the ones that most people are like HUH THAT'S ON A MAP. the largest ones we went in were indonesia and australia, which involved somewhat of a line but it was worth it. it would take entirely too much time to explain them all but let me tell you it was AH-MAY-ZING. all right. i'm being overenthusiastic. but it was SUPER COOL.

we were planning to stay in the expo until late so we could see the lights. so we did. we got there at 8 something in the morning and didn't leave until 10 that night. it was awesome.

we ate lunch at the cafeteria in the expo, where i had really good baozi and some weirdass soup that was like seaweed in water. we had a break for ice cream after the australia pavillion [vanilla for me, i keep it simple]. we bought dinner at one of the fast-food places and ate it on some benches outside, like hobos except everyone was doing it. pizza hut and kfc for the win.

then afterwards we went into more small pavillions. my legs hurt from all the walking but it was so much fun that we just kept going in more and more.

interestingly enough, the country name for belarus in chinese translates into "white russia" so i wondered out loud if belarus was like russia, but more racist. i got laughed at. there were stamp stations in most of the pavillions where you could "stamp" a "passport" and collect the stamps so we ran around doing that as well.

then we went home, which was an epic quest in and of itself being that we couldn't find the subway, and when we did it was completely PACKED with people. and when we finally got in bed that night, we were ordered to go right to sleep because we would have to do the same thing tomorrow. but my roommate and i watched V again instead of sleeping. teenage rebels. that's what we were.

the next day was essentially a repeat of the first day. more walking, except with more of the larger exhibits. we got this thing on a red lanyard that let us skip the lines into 5 exhibits and they were i think: india, nepal, morocco, lebanon [i think?] and the GM theater where we were supposed to see a 4D show.

so off we were waving our red lanyards in the faces of the workers and skipping the lines. morocco's pavillion was SUPERNICE. i think i will live in morocco when i grow up.

while waiting for the GM show we went into the north korea pavilion and then the iran one, which were right next to each other. it seems like a bad idea, right. nkorea's was really super happy fun time, which we were like yeah right. us four american kids went in and my roommate and i really wanted to buy a north korean flag to wave in the face of airport security on the way back. but we didn't.

then we ate dinner omnomnom. i had chicken rice that was way overpriced. but what can you do, eh? everyone's trying to make a living.

then we went to the GM show which involved people saying that in twenty years we would have personal cars that could steer and park themselves, avoid accidents, plan out routes to stop traffic congestion, and be 100 percent environmentally friendly. also the cities of the world by that time would have all turned into a loving places full of huge glass buildings, futuristic-looking highways, beautiful people and sunshine and peacenotwar and happy endings.

i'm sorry to tell you, GM. some dreams don't come true in 20 years. some don't come true in ever.

we went home that day on the subway, ready to head out again tomorrow.

the third day, we went to the america pavillion. we had heard from the military police who were patrolling that we could show them our passports and they would let us in since we had the sacred navy books. turns out it wasn't true but by waving our navy books in the face of the workers there and schmoozed our way in.

we [meaning me my dad and my brother] left the expo early that day, leaving our friends there. we had a date with the guy that picked us up from the train station [remember, gray BMW and converse?]. he said he would bring us around the city and so he did. we rode in high style, VIP. we saw a cute little shopping street full of stuff, the temple of the city god, and some street sights of the city.

let me tell you that i am in <3 with shanghai. if there is one place i want to go back to, it's that place. like maybe to live, even. it's great.

unfortunately as soon as a place starts growing on me we have to leave and that's what we did the very next morning. we had to fly out to chengdu, way out in sichuan province. so we did. the flight was not long. a small girl received a puzzle from an airline attendant. the small girl kept staring at me. i demanded a puzzle from the airline attendant. they were fresh out. so i complained in english, got stared at some more, and read song of the dodo halfway through again.

the usual. traveling gets so traveling after awhile. and then we touched down in chengdu international airport and then the fun began again.

shanghai END.