Wanna Be Snobbery: Shanghai Blues

I was finally able to go to China to test my Mandarin skills! David and I took a trip to Shanghai, the city which "If New York is the city that never sleeps, Shanghai is the city that never sits down." I asked a friend what her advice was on what to do there, and she said, "Are you kidding? Shop!" I did do some shopping, but mostly I just tried to cram in as much of the city as possible. [Note: If all my pictures look gray and hazy, it's because Shanghai is gray and hazy. All the time.]

First stop? Yu Yuan Garden. Described in the guide book as "pleasant enough", this garden was built in 1559 by a local official for his father. It's a maze of pavilions, rockeries, bridges and goldfish ponds. Occupied and ransacked by the British during the First Opium War (1839), it continues to be in danger from raging hoards of local tourists.

But angle the camera right and it looks peaceful. Below is the Jian Ru Jia Jing, or, The Corridor for Approaching the Best Scenery (that's really what it means).

This gingko tree is over four centuries old.

Being from Minnesota, I chose the Hall of Mildness...

A lot of the paths were Reflexology paths, meaning you were supposed to walk on them barefoot and give your feet a good massage. Given the Shanghai penchant for spitting everywhere, I kept my shoes on.

At one of our last stops, our guide stopped us and said she was going to give us a test. I immediately got nervous. "Of these three rocks, which one is the most beautiful?" I took a wild guess and answered the middle one, simply because it was in the middle. "Correct!" she said, and I felt smug, though I had absolutely no reason to, I had just chosen C on the multiple choice quiz. Apparently there are different elements that make a rock beautiful, not that I can remember what any of them were. All I remember is that I got the answer right.

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Shanghai is also known for it's silks, so next stop was a silk factory. I knew silk was made from, well, silk worms, but I really had no idea how. First step? The worms make cocoons, which are made of one long string of silk thread. But if they let the worms turn into moths and break out of the cocoon, then the silk isn't one long thread anymore, and it's no good. So they kill the worms in right before they break out by baking them. A little disturbing, but the worms probably don't feel anything, right? Right?

A single cocoon has 1000-1200 meters of silk thread! They have to find the end first, but they do that easy enough with a big brush.

It's too thin to make a single thread, so generally they use eight to make a full silk thread. You can use more, the more threads the more expensive the silk.

After that the silk is dyed and woven just like any other fabric. As with any tourist place, you have to go through a shop before leaving anywhere. I did splurg and bought two silk pillowcases, but I'm afraid to use them because I know David will drool on them.

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The city of Shanghai is split by the Huang Pu River. On one side is the older part of the city, where we were, and on the other is New Shanghai.