Hello Everyone,

Its been a few weeks since my last post. I thought I would give all of you my observational differences between the United States and China. Transportation in Shanghai is much nicer than I was use to. The subway and bus system are very comprehensive. It can take from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half on the metro system to get places. The city is huge so traveling around always takes a long amount of time. Generally, you stand everywhere you go. People crowd in and out of the metro system whether it is buses, trains, or the subway cars. I included a picture to the right that shows how people generally fight to get on any given bus. The Chinese don’t use lines so each place you wait you rush to get to the front of the line. It’s very different from the U.S. because I’m use to waiting in lines with order or a number to who gets served when. China is much like chaos everything is a dash to the finish line. If you don’t stand close enough to people for dinner or the atm you will be taken advantage of. To survive in the city you learn to be aggressive. Have to admit I didn’t think old Chinese ladies would be willing to push me out of the way. Life here has been very different and in some ways hard to get use to.
Shanghai is not a clean city. Everywhere you go there is trash on the side of the road. Shanghai is getting ready for the world trade exp next year, so construction equipment and derbies is scattered throughout the streets. Standards of how to act in public are also much different than the United States. You can find people throwing garbage on the side of the road or spitting regardless of where you are standing. Throwing old restaurant water or other products on the street is also quite common. Sometimes while walking down the street you are hit by an indescribable smell. It instantly makes you want to get sick. It usually smells like old cooking oil that has been used way to many times on food I would probably not eat. The city does have great gardens and amazing skyscrapers, but industrialization has taken a toll on the atmosphere of the city.
Finally I have found Chinese English is not equivalent to American English. I have found several funny English translated signs around the city. I included a few pictures of signs that best signify Chinese English. I have spoken the language my whole life and reading some of these signs make my head hurt. The first on the left is a sign hung up in the international dorms. I hope the picture quality is high enough for viewers of this post to read. Some of the other students and I have tried to guess what the real message of the sign is. What do you think? Chinese and English grammar is very different. The subject generally comes first in a Chinese sentence and they don’t use descriptive or possessive words like “is” in English. Sometimes I wonder if our university types in a Chinese sentence into an electronic translator and then posts in our dorms whatever the computer comes up with. Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of these pictures it’s been fun finding funny signs. The picture on the right is from a bathroom in Wuxi. I’m not totally sure what it means, but it was pretty funny to stumble upon this sign. I’m sure I will be posting more of these pictures latter on as I find them.

I thought I would update all of you on what I have been doing in the last few weeks. Classes have continued throughout the last two weeks. Learning Chinese in no way is easy. Trying to train my brain to see language in characters and not letters has been very difficult. Much of my studies involve memorization of Chinese characters. Class is good I’m learning a lot and working hard to grasp spoken Chinese. On the night of September 24th three of us went to checkout downtown. We had a lot of fun. The city seemed to be much prettier at night then during the day. Pollution clouds disappear and the moon was beautiful. I included a few pictures from our adventure. The first is in front of a fountain located around one of many famous Shanghai malls. Most of the expensive restaurants are located near the fountain. We have also visited a night club called G+ around this location. The second picture is once again in front of the Shanghai Expo mascot located near the Shanghai music hall located near the People’s Square. You can find this mascot throughout the city. The theme of the expo next year is about becoming more environmentally conscience. The mascot is associated with the saying “better city, better life” in order to promote an environmentally conscience lifestyle. I will have a large collection of pictures in front of this icon by the time I come home.

The last week has been very exciting. Students have had a week long break in order to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The large military parade took place on October 1st in Beijing. However, every place I have been has had unique ways of celebrating the creation of the event. Large and small Chinese flags are located throughout Shanghai. There in the stores, restaurants, and on the city streets. Although we did not take the opportunity to travel to Beijing, a few of us went to downtown Shanghai to observe the cities celebration. Thousands of people crowded the famous Nanjing road. This area hosts some of Shanghai’s best shopping malls. Here you can find the People’s Square with famous American shopping brands like Nike, Levi, and Louis Vuitton. We walked down the city square to observe what the Chinese people were doing. There were little red Chinese flags everywhere. People are always fascinated by people from the west. The common saying for a foreigner is “laowai.” So you hear people all the time calling us laowai. People will stop and stare when we are walking down the street. I have several pictures with random Chinese people. The independence was great. Its amazing to be in the country during this time. Beijing recently put on the Summer Olympics, while Shanghai prepares for the world expo. I have heard the city intends to host 20 million more people during the six month expo period. The city will be going crazy come next May! The first two pictures I have included are from our adventures downtown on the 1st and the final picture is from the People’s Square.
October 1st marked the first day of our break. We have about a week off so classes don’t start again until October 9th. Five of us decided to take and adventure outside of the city limits to two different cities. Our first stop was Su Zhou. The city has a few claims to fame. The first was its historical part of the ancient Silk Road established between Europe, the Americas, and Asia. The city continues to produce silk at one of its many silk farms. Su Zhou is also called the Venice of Asia. The entire city is built on water. Venice is next to the ocean, where Su Zhou is on Lake Tai (which is the fourth biggest lake in China). I don’t know the actual distance from one area to the other, but it took an hour to get half way around the lake by bus. Our trip started off on a bad note. We managed to miss the train we had tickets for. After using the little combined Chinese we knew the tickets were changed to another time. Once we arrived at the train station the five of us were lost in a sea of Chinese people. All the natives were interested in giving us a ride to our hotel. It frustrated a few of our members because the natives didn’t give us any space to discuss where we wanted to go first. We ended up staying in the hotel of all hostels. It reminded me of my trip to Europe several years ago. We walked in and the front desk looked a lot like a modern hotel, but our room ended up being in a separate, more run down building. I included a picture on the left of the room. After we got settled in we planned our adventure through the city. We started by visiting one of the many gardens located in the city. The second picture I included was from one of the many trees located in the garden. From there we moved onto a place called Tiger Hill. Its most notable feature is a large temple located on the top of the hill. It was a park with many beautiful places to take pictures. We had limited time so we did the speed tour up to the top. We took pictures along the way and caught the sun set on top of the hill. After we quickly left the park we went to a night boat ride down the canals. It was really strange to be looking into the widows and seeing people eat dinner. By the end of the boat ride all of us were tired. It was a full day. We got on the train around 7am and didn’t go to bed until late that evening. I enjoyed visiting this city. Su Zhou was a lot like Shanghai it was dirty, noisy, and full of visitors. The last picture is from downtown. The icon behind me was all over the city to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the PRC. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture but it was made of flowers. The Chinese are very talented with gardening. I hope to include some of the flowers located throughout campus.
The second city we visited was called Wuxi. We took two days to visit here. The trip started off much like Su Zhou by establishing our living before we adventured out into the city. The group decided to upgrade our accommodations to a nicer hotel. We ended up getting two rooms one was a suit and the other was a single living area. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t allow us all to squeeze in the one suite (despite all of us being able to). After we checked into our rooms we decided to take a look at the map and find where we wanted to go. We had a lot of difficulty figuring out what to do. Some people wanted to take a tour of the city on the public transit, while others wanted to see some of the gardens. We settled on taking a bus until we found something worth getting off for. We started by visiting a small temple in the middle of town. It was a Confusion temple. I included a picture on the left from a small statue outside the building. We proceeded after about two hours of riding public transit to a place which had ancient looking Chinese buildings. It ended up being the CCTV Wuxi Movie & TV production base. Before we entered we decided to have lunch at one of the local restaurants outside of the front of the park. This was an enlightening experience. Nobody spoke Chinese and the servers didn’t speak English. We ended up eating a ton of rice, some vegetables, and a weird meat looking substance. In the front of the restaurant were a few tanks of fish. When people ordered a meal with fish the cook (who was an old lady) would come out of the back of the restaurant grabbed a fish with her bare hands and took it back to the kitchen. Twenty minutes later it would come out cooked and ready to eat. That’s what I call fresh fish! Our group was still a little tense from our conversation of where to go. So we all had little food and little to drink before we went into the park. The park started out with a very impressive replica of an ancient Chinese gate (which was used for defense). Once I entered the place reminded me a lot of the Renaissance Festival in Colorado, except it was ancient China rather than the medieval ages of Europe. We walked throughout the park getting pictures with ancient looking buildings and statues. There were a few select shows about ancient Warfare and cultures of China. The park went right up to the shores of Lake Tai. We enjoyed the sun set over the water and enjoying each other’s company. The park had very few foreign visitors, so I have plenty of pictures with random Chinese people wanting pictures with our group members. The park was very impressive and I enjoyed learning a little about how Chinese movies are made on location. From here we left for the hotel and eat dinner. We still were tired from the day before. The last two pictures in this paragraph are from inside the park.
The next day we spent visiting a Buddhist temple including the largest bronze statue of Buddha in the world. It stands 88 meters tall. The park was full of interesting facts about Buddhism and the ancient history of China. Only two of us went on this trip due to the entrance fee. Although It was worth every penny! The site was located on a peninsula located on Lake Tai. The sun was out and the day was beautiful we spent the whole afternoon learning about the statue and its location. We did a lot of walking and I was tired by the end of this trip. I only included one photo from this area but we took plenty. We ended up spending a few hours downtown before we caught a train home. The five of us visited a church we found along the way. It was really pretty at night. I enjoyed the whole trip and learned a lot about the people I went on this adventure with. The final picture is from downtown.
I learned a few things from this last trip. Traveling by train in China is a breeze. You can take the bullet train to just about anywhere from Shanghai. That was comforting to find out. I would like to plan a few weekend trips to smaller cities throughout China. It’s a bad idea to try and travel with five people in the country. Most cab drivers will not allow five people into their cars and it’s impossible to get a single room with five people. Both would have helped to lower the cost of the trip. There was some conflict of people on the trip so picking who you travel with makes a big difference. I missed traveling in Europe where things were much more carefree. I glad the five of us were able to get out of town and visit nearby cities. The city as of late has been a little depressing. Rain the last few weeks combined with the overcast clouds makes it hard to get by some days. The trip was a nice break to see what China is all about. The last few days I have been catching up on sleep and school work. Most of the international students are back now and we are ready for another few weeks of class before mid terms. I apologize for the delay of this post, but I thought I would send a long update of what I was doing. I look forward to future posts with even more pictures.

Hope all is well,

Travis