"CHINA!"

Dec. 7-13, 2007

Are we really at the end? It feels like yesterday when I was telling
a story from Portugal about the woman who pointed at Ann and screamed
"China!". And now China has come and gone (Clearly I'm way behind on
my blog--We actually left Shanghai on Dec. 14th.)

So, Shanghai in a nutshell:

Day 1:

After the ship was cleared, Marimam, Makiko, Amanda, and I headed off
into the city--It's fun how we always end up out together. We
stopped for some lunch at a local restaurant, where no one spoke
English, and after a mixture of sign language and confusion, we had a
great little buffet meal, for less than $2. Let the cultural
experience begin! After lunch, we then strolled down the Bund, an
area along the water considered to be "old Shanghai's commercial
heart", which is interesting because I've never been to a city where
I felt like there were so many hearts, or city centers--Literally. I
definitely had difficulty getting my bearings. We actually ended up
coming back to the Bund twice, once with my students on our Academic
Field Program, and another time to one of the clubs, where we
celebrated Mel's birthday. So on that first day, as we were walking
along the Bund, we ran into a Persian family. Actually, it all
started with the initial "look"--As in "I'm Persian; You're Persian"--
after which we started chatting. They were in Shanghai for a
conference. Very friendly--wanted to take pictures with us...and it
only took about 5 minutes before I was asked about my marital status.

As for the rest of the day, we strolled around Nanjing Road, which is
considered to be one of the popular shopping areas among the
Shanghainese--Very bustling and lots of tall flashy buildings and
department stores. Also, lots of opportunity to try traditional
Chinese snacks--chestnuts, red bean/sticky rice treats (Karen and
Bri, I was very excited about the red beans.), etc. At the end of
the night, we headed for some sushi at a revolving sushi restaurants--
the kind where the dishes rotate around the center of the restaurant
on a conveyer belt.

Day 2-6:

Day 2 began my Academic Field Program (AFP). I was a Participant
leader for the Worlds of Art & Culture group. It might be the
Learning Circle I would have been in as a student, so I was very
excited about leading this trip. Plus, the students are great--A
very small tight-knit group. Because our group was so small, we were
combined with the Global Cultures & Social Change group, led by Dana
and Alle, which was fun. We visited The Fudan University (one of our
Academic Steward schools) and heard a great lecture from one of the
Fudan professors on the ship about "Traditional Chinese Arts &
Crafts". The professor basically gave us a run-through on the
different artwork that we would be seeing, which was very helpful.
They included dough sculptures, paper cuts, embroidery, cloth art,
masks, clay sculptures, shadow puppets, woodcuts, and folk
paintings. Immediately after the lecture, we went to the Shanghai
Art Museum. I could have spent hours there, looking at all the art
work and relics. It was cool to see artwork similar to the ones I
purchased on Semester at Sea. I also think Chinese calligraphy is
just beautiful, and I love how each character is a word and that the
vocabulary is comprised of a combination of words. For example,
"library" is a combination of the characters for "books", "pictures",
and "buildings."

After the museum, we visited Shingwang Mei (Old Town), where you find
the 18th century Huxingting Tea House, a beautiful garden, and a
pavilion filled with lots of traditional arts and crafts and food
treats. Dana and I did a little bit of tea tasting at one of the tea
shops--It's such a cool ritual to watch. There was also the flower
tea, which is just beautiful--You place the "bud" in hot water, and
it literally blooms into a flower right before your very eyes. David
B., I think you showed Henri and I one of these before.

On the second day of the AFP, we visited the city of Suzhou, known as
the "city of gardens", with a history of over 1,500 years. The
particular garden we saw was called "Humble Administrators" Garden.
Very serene. And the air was misty and cool, so it added to the
ambiance. On that same afternoon, we went to the Water Village--a
rural landscape, surrounded by lakes and marshes, with streams and
waterways branching through them. This was probably my favorite part
of the AFP. The whole scene look straight out of a movie.

Towards the end of the week, we visited a Community Center, which
included a space for older generations of Chinese people to enjoy
leisure activities, whether it was working on the computer work,
participating in dancing, singing, etc. In the same day, we also
visited the Children's Palace, an after-school program for children
to learn music and create artwork. Some of their work was just
amazing--I couldn't even do that work now at my age, let alone at age
six!

Mornings, Evenings, & Day 7:

On a few of the mornings, I got up early and went running around the
port area. It was a nice way to start the day and to see some of the
local people begin their day. On one morning in particular, I ran
into (not literally) a Tai Chi class, right there on the side walk!
One of the women motioned for me to come join, so I did. When I
wasn't AFP'ing, I spent the evenings going out into the city. One
night, Ann took a big group of us to a "hot pot" restaurant, where we
cooked our own food (seafood, vegetables, etc.) in these two big pots
in the middle of the table. And we were given different dipping
sauces, too, from peanut to spicy chile sauce. So good! I was in
heaven--the dipping, the sampling! One funny observation we had was
when Ann was talking to the wait staff in Shanghainess, and they were
speaking very fervently--The rest of us got a little nervous because
we thought they were arguing. But Ann said no; That it's just the
way they communicate--Directly and with avidity (Not sure if avidity
is the right word to use--I just looked it up in the Thesaurus.). On
the third evening, I went out with one of my students, Yuan, who
lives and studies in Shanghai. She is actually a student from my
Residential Community (RC), so it was great to spend quality time
with her and have her show me around her city. We had a wonderful
meal together and ended the evening at a little jazz bar in
Xintiandi. I also went for a massage during the week--Actually I
went for three. They were just so great and relatively pretty
inexpensive. I was addicted. Ty and I went one night, which then
turned into a "brief" stop at Jam's bar, where we played a dice and
paper game with these four other women and ended the night with an
extensive karaoke session at "Cash Box"--I don't think I've ever sang
so much karaoke in my life--It was a blast. Two night slater, I
went again to a massage parlor with Mariam, Amy, Amanda, and Ty, and
then for a third time with Amanda, Makiko, and Cherine. There are
massage parlors everywhere, but we found this street that had an
entire row of them. And what was so funny (and pathetic on our part)
is that when we were walking down the street on our last night, the
people working at the massage parlor waved to us from inside--like we
were regulars. Which we were. For that week at least. On our last
day, Amy, Chris, Makiko, Mariam, Amanda and I headed out to the
markets. The taxi Amy, Chris, and I were in got lost, so a 15-minute
ride ended up being 1 1/2 hours. But we finally made it, and
actually ran into the rest of our group that afternoon. We looked
around for a little while, and then a few of us who weren't in the
shopping mood, left to go for our final massage.

So that about sums it up. Shanghai is actually our first stop for
Voyage 2, so we'll be back January 10th!

Upon returning to the ship on our last night, we were met with some
startling news. Justice, Michael, and Aaron from Ghana couldn't get
a Hong Kong visa and had to disembark that night, thus unable to
finish the rest of the journey with our community. It was very
abrupt, very unfortunate, and very sad to see them go. And in some
ways, it marked the beginning of all the good-byes to come. On top
of that, two of our other students (Ivan from Belarus and George from
Russia) had to fly to Shanghai to get their Hong Kong visa, while
Parvin from Iran wasn't sure she could get a visa at all (She finally
did after countless hours spent and people working from all sides,
but it was a very disheartening experience for her.).