Shanghai

Shanghai skyline

We were finally able to check off the last Disneyland on our bucket list.  We found a super cheap airfare to Shanghai, China and managed to swing a last minute trip to Disneyland, China.

Sleeping Beauty Castle

Peg leg Tom, Arrgh, where's his brown pants?

I know we have been to China before so we already knew it was weird, but I am always surprised how weird it can be.  Unlike Beijing, Shanghai was very commercialized.  There were malls on every corner and every subway stop let out into a mall.  I just can't believe that the Chinese people have enough disposable income to shop at Cartier and Christies.  Anyway, we tried to find the back alley markets but it looks like they have all been razed and new shopping centers put up.  It is actually quite sad as those old bazaars are so cultural and one of the best parts of visiting Asia.  We were able to take a subway ride to an outer suburb of Shanghai that was built on a river.  It has beautiful Asian bridges and some old markets and street vendors that we enjoyed.

Eating in China is truly an adventure.  There are many foods that really don't even look like food.  Asian street food is a whole other realm of courage.  In the old river town there were various vendors selling bugs on a skewer that the Chinese were going bonkers over.  Tom put on his adventurous eating bib and tried a skewered scorpion as well as deep fried crab.  Isaac tried a baked quail egg.  Tom said thumbs down on the scorpion, so so on the crab but Isaac really liked the quail egg, go figure.  Adventurous eating to Nick is noodles in chicken broth rather than plain water so he sat this particular activity out.  Due to my liver problems, I am a little leery about eating weird food overseas so I sat this one out too.

Oven baking quail eggs

Deep fried crab on a stick, if you are Chinese, this is like Krispy Kreem

Don't know what this is but the Chinese were buying it by the kilo.  None of us were brave enough...

We had lots of fun touring the old part of the city.  It was actually founded on drug money during the opium years.  I had no idea.  We were able to learn a lot of Chinese history from the 1800s to recently.  The kids were surprised that they couldn't get on Facebook or easily access Google secondary to the government sensors.  It led to a great discussion about freedom and human rights.

We were able to go to a Chinese acrobatics program.  I know that is waaay touristy, but still, when do you get to see a guy keep 20 plates twirling all at once or contortionists bend in crazy ways?  One of the coolest things we found was a Buddhist temple that would give you a portion of Buddhist scripture and then a gold gel pen that you could use to copy the writing.  It turned out super cool looking and we got to meditate with the Buddhist monks while we did it.  The part that we copied translated into a blessing for peace and joy.

Nick copying his scripture, Buddhas in the background

This is shrine in one of the temples.  The locals were tossing coins in.  If a coin lands in the top tier your prayer has a better chance of being answered.  We threw a few in, Mine only made it to the second tier.  

 One last highlight was walking through a park on a Sunday morning.  The regular apartments are so small that people just go to the parks to socialize and have fun.  We saw people doing gymnastics, dancing, practicing their musical instruments and playing chess.  One of the dancers grabbed Nick and Isaac and danced with them.  So much fun! (Go to my facebook Shanghai album for the dancing video.  I couldn't get blogger to play nicely with my videos)