Ryan and I were embarking on a 26 day tour of China through
Wendy Wu tours. I had been staying with Ryan’s family for the past several
weeks and I was so excited to be leaving Toowoomba. I love his family and the
city is beautiful but it’s small and isolated and I was going stir crazy. I
needed to get out of there, so why not take a trip to China? The real story behind the China trip is much longer but that's for another day! The flight from
Brisbane to Singapore took seven hours and I was miserable at the end, I had
not slept at all. We had a two hour layover then another five hour flight to
Shanghai. Thankfully I was able to nap a little on the second flight so I
wasn’t 100% dead when we got to Shanghai.
I was very happy to see other people getting off the plane
with Wendy Wu tags on their bags. I always have the worse case scenario playing
in the back of my head (in this case no one being there to pick us up and
trying to find our hotel in a place where we couldn’t speak the language) so
seeing other people we could group together with to solve problems if needed
immediately put my mind at ease. My worries were unnecessary though (as always)
as a girl with a big Wendy Wu flag was one of the first people we saw coming
out of the customs terminal.
There were three other couples with us as we took a bus from
the airport to our hotel. The girl with the flag was Melody who was to be our
local guide in Shanghai. I was expecting a quiet ride but she started right in
with the history of the city, the development and layout and districts we
passed on the way to the hotel.
For hundreds of years Shanghai was just a tiny little
fishing community. Throughout the long history of China Shanghai was never in
the spotlight or regarded as special in any way. Until the revolution and the
decision to open China up to the world. Shanghai was chosen for its location to
be one of the first cities to be developed. It is now home to around 24 million
people and the richest districts in the country. The fascinating thing about it
though is almost all the modern development is less than 20 years old. They
built an entire bursting city in less than two decades. We also saw plenty of
the old Shanghai as well. Parts that were still under developed, mini farming
communities still living in the outskirts of town. It’s a city still under
construction. Melody described the city as having three circles. The inner
circle contains the business centers, the most expensive apartments and
shopping areas. The second circle is where most of the apartments are and the
lesser businesses. The third outer circle is the area still being developed,
the cheap apartments and farming communities.
The most interesting thing I saw though was all the washing
hanging outside the windows. Having a washer and dryer is still a luxury and
most people hang their clothes out to dry. These massive apartment buildings
would have clothes hanging out on a pole 20-30 stories in the air! Not to
mention it wasn’t very warm out, it was the middle of February, the temperature
was only 10 or so degrees above freezing. Those clothes must have been frozen
stiff. It was also hard to see buildings
more than a few miles away. It was hard to tell the difference between smog and
fog but the pollution was pretty bad in Shanghai.
When we got to our hotel we had about two hours to unpack
and relax before dinner. We met our national guide, Gump. He was going to stay
with us throughout the entire tour. Dinner was just inside the hotel and we met
the group. There were actually two groups on this particular tour, we were
group A with 28 people and then there was group B with about 23 people. I never
quite figured out how they separated the groups. We went to all the same places
and stayed in the same hotels but we did not socialize with the other group too
much. I came to recognize their faces but except for a few words exchanged on
various elevators we didn’t interact much.
Our group was Gump’s Family. We were 28 people. 21 Aussies,
6 Brits and I was the token American. We were split equally 14 females and 14
males. There were seven couples including Ryan and myself, five single females
and six single men and then one Mother/Daughter team. Aside from the Daughter,
who was our age, everyone else was 50+. Almost all of them retired, I think
there were only two other couples who had to go back to work. The oldest in our
group was 81 years old and walked with a fake leg. He moved a little slower but
his mind was sharp and he was well looked after on the trip.
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| Gump's Family |
Dinner was one of the best meals ever. I have always loved
Chinese food but living in an isolated state on the other side of the world it
was never as good as it should have been. Being able to eat real authentic
Chinese food was one of the things I was looking forward to the most and they
did not disappoint. We were seated around round tables that would hold 8 to 10
people then we were served usually 8 to 10 different dishes to share. It always
included 3-4 meat dishes, a couple vegetables, a bowl of rice and a bowl of
soup. And it was fantastic, every single plate.
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