Shanghai: The first stop

 I am back in my apartment in Chengdu China after a near month-long trip through China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Cambodia.  It was a great trip but would have been better if my wife and best friend could have been there with me.  As you know Marian has been in Kentucky caring for her dying father, Leonard Holloway.  He passed away on Valentines Day and his funeral is Sunday the 17^th.  

February 10^th was the Chinese New Year based on their lunar calendar.  They use the solar or western calendar as the official calendar but the dates of all of the traditional Chinese holidays are based on the lunar calendar. So next year the Chinese New Year will be on a different day than the 10^th.  The Chinese New Year celebrates the coming of their Spring and so the week-long celebrations that start on the 10^th is also known as the Spring Festival.  Many if not most of shops/businesses close for the week of the Spring Festival.  Cities like Beijing and Chengdu have a lot of people that are not originally from the city and tradition mandates that they travel back to their family hometowns for the Spring festival.   It is hard finding bus, train, air tickets at this time of the year.    University and other schools all have vacation times during Spring festival.  The last official day of the fall semester was January 20^th and classes resume on February 25^th.  Those dates are chosen so that students can make it home and back without having to compete for tickets with the other millions of Chinese that travel home for the week of the Spring Festival.

Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia and I believe Thailand celebrate the lunar new year.  However, Cambodia and Thailand lean more to racial, language and religious customs to India than to China.  Vietnam is very Chinese-like except they decided to adopt a phonetic Romanized written language in place of the Chinese pictographs. The Cambodians look more like the Indians than the Chinese/Koreans/Japanese and their language is tied to Sanskrit/Indi/Persian rather than chinese pictographs.

Our first destination was Shanghai, China’s financial center and shipping mecca.  I share some about Shanghai in this email and then I will send separate emails (or blog postings) for each of the other major destinations of the trek.

Shanghai is known for its many massive skyscrapers and the Pearl of the Orient TV Tower, (1,535 ft).  

Pudong district with Pearl of the Orient TV Tower

 There is a concerted effort to significantly vary the architectural design for the buildings.  The Pudong district is behind me across the river….the highest concentration of skyscrapers.  We went up in the tower.  Their were at least 3 observation decks. One picture I took this picture of neighboring buildings.

The sun's reflection off the red portion of the globe is seen reflected in the river.

From observation deck.

 There is another observation deck with a glass floor.  The person in the next picture is squatting down on the floor and if you look carefully you can see the ground through the glare of the glass floor.  One of my friends took a picture of me laying down on the glass floor so that in theory you would look like there was nothing between you and the ground.  
 

It took a few minutes to gain the courage to trust the glass.  No one else was my size so I laid on the steel support beam just in case...

As you can see the tower is not the tallest structure.  The current tallest building is the financial center building, which has the opening near the top.  Openings similar to that are not uncommon.  There is a religious superstition that an opening like that will prevent evil spirits from being in the building.  The building  to the right (with the 4+ cranes attached to the top) is under construction and will be the new tallest building in Shanghai and China after it completes but I believe there are other buildings that are in the works in other cities that will be taller still than the building that is under construction.

The row of buildings in this picture lines the river boulevard directly across from the skyscrapers of the Pudong district. 

On one hand I marvel at the engineering and architectural marvels that abound and on the other hand I scratch my head at the seeming architectural cognitive dissonance that abounds!  Although not as tall, the many skyscrapers of Hong Kong have variety but seem to my inexpert senses to better fit into the whole of the city than the almost odd range of, or over-stated variety of buildings of Shanghai.

Quite the variety of interesting buildings.....

Another shot across the water of the Pudong district skyscrapers...and their reflections on the river.

Interesting mix of the old traditional design and Pudong district skyscrapers including the tallest under construction being eclipsed by the other skyscraper.

Not an airport....not sure what company has this building.

We know where the aliens landed!

There were also some great tradition style shopping districts and museums.  I wish we would have had more time to explore Shanghai.

Next Stop: China’s Miami Beach.