China - Suzhou/Shanghai - 3/13/2005

This morning we woke up having slept much better than any of the previous 3 nights, so even though we were still slightly sleep deprived we were much better rested. We had to wake up a bit early to take our suitcases outside, but we managed it successfully.
After getting ready, Brad and I decided to skip the optional visit to the silk and pearl factories and went to walk around Suzhou to get a better feel for the city. We ended up walking aimlessly for about 3 hours getting to see a lot of different buildings and parks. The city seemed to be very active for a Sunday, yet it did hold a more relaxed feeling than the larger cities.
For lunch we were able to seek out our own place to get it, so we took the opportunity to go into a restaurant where we seemed to be the only foreigners. It was a very typical noodle house, where people ordered downstairs from a menu on the wall, and then the food was brought to their table. In our case since we couldn't read the menu we were taken to a table and given the only English menu they had. While it was more descriptive than the one in the wall, which was in Chinese, some of the entries still held a lot of mistery, such as the "7 Delicacy Noodles: Noodles with our 7 delicacies", when I asked the waitress what those 7 delicacies were, all she told me was that it had delicacies, so in order to maintain my stomach lining I went with the safer bet of "Fried Egg Noodles", the food was really good, and Brad and I ate a ton of food for less than 4 dollars for both of us.
After lunch we met up with the group again in order to visit the "Master of Nets Garden", which was a house that belonged to a high government official during one of the dinasties, and we got to tour his house with all the gardens that were in it. We clearly observed Feng Shui aspects all over the house, and we got to spend more than an hour walking around, taking pictures, and listening to our guide describe some of the interesting aspects of the house.
After visiting the garden we finally got onto the bus to head over to Shanghai.
As I mentioned yesterday, Shanghai looks amazing, there are tall buildings everywhere you look, and the amount of construction still going on is unbelievable. This really brought home the point made at the US embassy in beijing, when the speaker made the joke about China's national bird being the 'Crane'.
As soon as we got to Shanghai we checked into the Holiday Inn (Finally a western hotel!), and then we had to run out to dinner around 5:30 pm. Since we were running late, and we were rushed, all the dishes were already arranged on the lazy susan. This was a much better setup than the usual way where dishes are brought out one at a time, since it IS much faster, and at the same time it gives you a clear idea of what exactly the meal is composed of, allowing you to pick and choose your favorite dishes. We managed to eat our dinner in record time for a group our size, and then run out of the restaurant.
From dinner we were taking straight to a "cruise". It is my opinion that in China the word is used very liberally to describe anything that floats and has a roof, but this was a 5 story ship that took us down one of Shanghai's main river so we could get a great view of Shanghai's nightline and the Bund. I managed to snap off several pictures of the waterfront and I was even asked to pose with a group of Chinese older ladies who were also touring Shanghai.
After the cruise was over we were taken by our tour guide to the tallest building in Shanghai, the Jinmao tower. This tower is composed by offices up to the middle and the top 40 floors are part of a very luxurious hotel. On the top floor there is an observation deck that allows you to see the whole city. Unfortunately it was tough to take good pictures through the glass windows, but I still tried to. The views were amazing, and I don't think any of my pictures did it any justice.
By this time, after a very long day many of us were pretty much exhausted, and the following day promised to be almost just as long, so we headed back to the Holiday Inn so we could rest for the next day when we'd meet our Jiao Tong counterparts.