Shanghai and Beijing

November 28 - December 9

Don was invited to Shanghai to put on a USA Basketball Coaching Academy.  So off we go to China!  On Thursday, Nov. 28 we flew from Denver to San Francisco.  We were late taking off to SF due to weather in SF, but managed to make our flight to Shanghai.  The 13 1/2 hour flight was a pleasure in business class.  Hooray for Don's upgrades and special certificates.

We arrived Friday evening (lost 14 hours due to time differences) and checked into the Marriott for two nights to enjoy Shanghai before Don starts work.

Beautiful lobby

Spacious room

Shanghai city views from our room

View from our room

Breakfast in the executive lounge.

Quite the hotel library!

Saturday - Sightseeing Shanghai
 Aric and Melanie Cherry came to out hotel to be our tour guides for the day through Shanghai.  Aric and Melanie teach in Shanghai and have been there for three years.  We started by walking through People's Square which we can see from the hotel and walked along Nanjing Road and past shops on the way to Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar.

Melanie, Aric and Don in People's Square

Entrance to this area

Yu Gardens and Bazaar
On the way to the Gardens we walked through shops that peddle everything from souvenirs to traditional medicines. The YuYuan Gardens are a beautiful and peaceful Ming dynasty gardens.  The zigzag bridge to enter protects the structures as it is believed that evil spirits can't turn corners.

YuYuan Gardens

Huge Rockery - Reputed to be one of the best Ming rockeries, it is surely one of the largest.  It recalls the peaks, caves, and gouges of southern China.

Huge rockery

The white walls in the garden are topped by the dragon. 

Dragon Wall

We walked through the neighborhoods to find the best dumpling place for lunch.  Aric and Melanie know this city!  We tried three kinds of dumplings - pork, pork & shrimp, and crab which is in season. 

Typical Shanghai neighborhood

Lunch time - dumplings

The struggle with the chopsticks was real!

More walking!  Off to the Huangpu River area - The Bund on one side with the Shanghai Tower, Oriental Pearl TV tower, SH World Financial Center (looks like bottle opener) on the other side of the river.  We went to the top of the Shanghai Tower which is the city's tallest building.

Oriental Pearl TV tower

SH World Financial Center

View from the top of the SH Tower.  Lights of The Bund coming on.

View from The Bund toward Oriental tv tower and SH tower.

Dinner - Sichaun style (pork, chicken, green beans, ribs, cauliflower).  Sichaun is a SW Chinese province and the food is a spicy Chinese style.

Basil martini

Sunday - Aric and Melanie came back to the hotel again and we were off for the day!
Jing'an Temple is one of the city's most revered places for ancestor worship. 

Then we walked to the Propaganda Museum.  We couldn't take pictures there.  It was a large collection of the propaganda posters used in China.  We stopped to buy a melon on the street.  It was large and tasted similar to a grapefruit. 

Sunday evening we switched hotels so Don would be ready to work Monday - Thursday.  While Don worked I had a guide to help me get where I wanted - back to the Yu Garden Bazaar shops, the Shanghai Museum and the Jade Buddha Temple.

Narada Boutique Hotel

Jade Buddha Temple - The most famous of Shanghai's temples.  It was built in 1882 to enshrine two beautiful jade Buddha statues that were brought from Burma.  Photos of the finest of the jade pieces was forbidden, but you can take a picture of the reclining jade Buddha.

Shanghai Museum - With a collection of over 120,000 pieces, the SH Museum displays some of the best cultural relics from China's neolithic period to the Qing dynasty, a span of over 5000 years.

Beijing
Friday morning early we took a four hour trip from Shanghai to Beijing on the high speed train.  Business class was a good place to enjoy the China countryside going by.

213.75 miles per hour!

The Great Wall of China