Coming into China it was the country I was least excited about, but coming out it wasn’t so bad, but I had enough pollution and rancid smells. I was a little surprised to learn that the tap water is not safe to drink, I feel like China this great global power, would have their water situation pulled together. It was weird to see some of the tallest building in the world right next to apartments that looked like they could fall apart at any moment.

On the first day my mom and little brother left for Shanghai Disneyland so my dad and I were by ourselves for the next two days. We waited to go through immigration until the last call. After the others left my dad and I went on a nice walk through the Bund which is Shanghai’s historical area.

The next day my dad and I went on the Shanghai city Orientation tour offered by SAS, that way we didn’t have to plan our own day. In the morning we went to the Yu Gardens, everybody was off work because of the Lunar New Year, and that made the bazaar outside garden packed, but the actual garden was almost empty. It was very pretty. I learned that for a dragon to be called a dragon it has to have five toes, and for a garden to be called a Chinese garden it has to have four features a water, rockery, a pavilion, and plants. Then we had a traditional Chinese lunch. My dad and I had both been feeling under the weather so we decided to stay on the bus during everyone’s trip to the Bund. Afterwards, the group was going to the Shanghai Museum, which by the description the tour guide gave it sounded boring. Apparently some of the interesting thing were ones that our guide didn’t tell us about. We decided to bail and catch a cab back to the ship. We had been back for about an hour and both of had started to get bored, so we decided to go to the “Black Market”. At the market you can get a lot of things for cheaper than normal by bargaining, but they are all fake. All the college students had a blast bargaining for fake stuff. The first time I went I got a $9 Ronaldo jersey. Later I went back and got two pairs of shoes, one Nike and one pair of Adidas Yeezys.

On day three my little brother and mom got back from Disneyland and we spent the rest of the day relaxing until we went to our Airbnb in the Bund. The building we stayed in was in disrepair, usually they would just destroy old buildings, but this one is a historic building. When we walked in everybody but my mom was freaking out because the paint on the walls was falling off and the elevators were scary. When we walked in the room we were all relieved to see how nice it was. My mom was the only one who had any warning about the condition of the common areas. She had also already seen pictures of the inside.

We rested for a while then went to get food. My little brother had a very hard time, so it took forever. My mom, my dad, and I all had beef cups. Also, I would suggest trying gelato made with liquid nitrogen. I got tropical mango, it was delicious!

The next day we went to the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology. From the outside it looked awesome, but on the inside it was just ok. We couldn’t read a lot of the signs and it was insanely crowded. They had a cool animal exhibit, but that was about it. We were all hungry and there was a cafeteria in the museum. The food was terrible, the pizza they had was peas, carrots, corn, and chopped up hot dog, it was very bizarre.

The “Black Market” is in the subway station right next to the museum. My little brother and mom hadn’t been yet. My little brother got some “leg breakers”, they are basically Heelys that clip onto your shoes, he also got some nice sunglasses. We finished up at the market and went to the Shanghai Tower, the second tallest building in the world. We went up to the top and we could see the only part of the city, it goes on forever. The elevators’ top speed is 10m per second. It only took 45 seconds to get all the way up. The building is an incredible 600m tall. In 2020 it will be only the sixth tallest building in the world. For a building to contend for a spot on the top 50 tallest buildings, at least 50% of the building must be usable space.

On our last day we went to the Zhujijiao water village. It is a little like Venice, Italy, because most of the streets were water. It smelled bad and the water was a very ugly green. We were all expecting it to be a little more pulled together. We didn’t get there until 1 pm, so we missed our friends that had just left. For lunch we went to the sixth floor of a building that had relatively large food court, we were the only Americans, or Europeans there. The food was amazing, we all got “Chinese Ramen”.