Shanghai City Tour Part 2

After the museum, we went to a pearl gallery, where I got to learn about the industry in Shanghai. I got a little lecture over this tank of oysters about the various pearl colors and how there isn't just one pearl in the oysters, but usually quite a number. The store guide had me guess how many were in one, and I guessed wrong, of course. I think there were like ten pearls in it, but none of them were good. She gave me two small ones to keep as a souvenir. I don't really know what to do with them now.



Next I had to guess which string of pearls out of three was fake, and I guessed right this time, but probably only out of luck. She showed me how to identify real pearls: if you rub them together, they will grind each other down a bit and produce dust, whereas plastic won't change. I did not get a free string of pearls for guessing right this time.

I looked around and ended up buying a couple nice looking pearl pendant necklaces for myself and my mother for not a lot of money. The saleslady was trying to get me to buy four and get one free, and in retrospect, I probably should have gone for it, given they were only $15 apiece, but I had already spent so much money getting to Shanghai that I felt buying a lot of souvenirs would be a bad idea.

After the pearls we went to a silk factory and gallery, where I saw the process of silk production.

Here are the little silkworm cocoons that they use for silk strands:


Ropes of silk strands:


More cocoons:


Silk work life cycle? Hard to see.


Machine:


You probably can't see the tiny strands, but the machine is unwinding them from the cocoons:


I got practical demonstrations on how the silk is stretched into thin layers for reasons I don't remember.




And another demonstration on a larger scale, for use in quilts and comforters. The silk comforters are only silk on the inside, apparently, with cotton covers. The silk is good for temperature control--warm in winter, cool in summer.


Finally, I got to look around the gallery. I considered getting silk sheets, since they were as low as $65, but I have so much stuff to bring home from Korea that I'm trying to reduce the amount of big things I buy. Plus I won't have my own bed for years to come, and I don't want to be traveling with a set of sheets all over the world.

Here are a couple bedding examples (much pricier than sheets):





The rest of the gallery was a lot of scarves, handkerchiefs, ties, and clothing. I was trying on some traditional dresses for a while, but had some trouble. The Large size was a bit too small, then the XL size fit on me, but I wouldn't be able to sit down in it. The saleslady found me a dress in XXL (here, my tour guide reminded me kindly that these are Chinese sizes, so it's really not that big), but there seemed to be a missing link between XL and XXL. The last dress was like a muumuu on me, and these are supposed to be form-fitting, so it was pretty unacceptable. I considered buying it anyway and taking it to the tailor, but only for about a half second. Considering it's silk and the amount of work that would have to be done on it to make it fit me, the tailor would probably cost more than the dress.

I ended up with a nice silk bag, which soon after I got it back to Korea, fell apart on the inside nylon lining and I've had to resew it twice. It was only $15, though, a good deal.

Shanghai City Tour Part 1

I had booked a city tour online for February 14th, basically the only activity I did in Shanghai due to sickness, weather, and time constraints. Because it was the first day of the lunar new year, a major holiday, I was the only one on the tour. I felt kind of bad that they had to work on a holiday just for one person. It also made the day extremely difficult for me, since I had to converse with the tour guide. I'd rather have just listened to her drone on to a group, and not have had to open my mouth all day.

Our first stop was the Shanghai Museum, where we had to stand outside in the rain and wait in line for at least 30 minutes. It was grueling. Once inside, I was given an hour to wander around and see the exhibits.

First I looked at some furniture:




This is supposed to be a detail of the above, but the detail is kind of hard to see. Pretty much everything in this hall was intricately carved.



Same problem here:



I totally want this set:


I enjoyed the architecture of the museum. These are the stairs:


Next I saw some paintings. Many of them would look like something else, then I would realize I was looking at it wrong, and I'd see what it was supposed to be.

Like, I think I must have been seeing some grumpy, disfigured old man in this one, but then I saw the bird and realized I was looking at a rock:




Next was pottery:





Floor design in the lobby:


Ceiling:


The End.

Shanghai First Night

For my Lunar New Year Holiday I went to Shanghai. I'm not going to say much about it, because it was a pretty lousy weekend, but I'll give you some pictures and videos over the next couple entries. I had been sick with some sort of flu since the Wednesday before, and even had to take my first sick day at Kate LA the day before I left, just so I could rest up enough to possibly be well enough to enjoy my weekend. Although I did get well enough to not alarm anyone at the airports (which I was EXTREMELY nervous about), I did not have a nice time in Shanghai, particularly since the first thing that happened to me was I got ripped off royally on the taxi fare home, since it was a major holiday, I assume.

I stayed at the Everbright Hotel, which has an exhibition hall and is popular with business travelers. It also has a pool, which I paid for a more expensive hotel for, then I found out charged a fee for use of the pool and athletic facilities, and I couldn't even use the stupid pool anyway, because I was too sick. What a waste. Otherwise, the hotel would have been totally nice, except it didn't have A SINGLE CLOCK ANYWHERE IN THE WHOLE PLACE. That really bothered me, as I had to use my cell phone to czech the time (my watch band broke recently), and my cell phone put me in the wrong stupid time zone. I also didn't have my charger, so I was afraid it'd run out of battery the whole time.

Because of the whole time issue, I was waiting an hour early in the lobby for my tour van to pick me up, and had tried to call them before the scheduled time to see why they were late. Luckily, n one picked up when I called.

Night exterior:




My room:


It was freezing in that damn room all night, as nice as it was. I wish they'd turned the heat on before I'd arrived.



It being the eve of one of the biggest holidays of the year, there were major celebrations going all night long. The fireworks started off like this:


But as midnight approached, began to look like this:


They continued strong until about 2am, and then kept going lightly until about 4am, then only sporadically throughout the morning and all the next day. I would know, as the medication I was taking for my sickness kept me up all night (I hadn't slept in days).

I stayed in the room all the first night to rest, so I would be strong enough to endure, or even enjoy, the city tour I had scheduled the next day.

Classroom Stuff

On Friday two vaguely interesting things happened.

The first was that a student went into an almost catatonic sleep in my class. I got a new class earlier this month with four very young students in it. At least one of them is in kindergarten, which is the one who fell asleep. Lots of students fall asleep in class here and there. Actually, I'm surprised I don't get one or more in every class daily, considering how overworked they constantly are. Somehow they manage to stay awake most of the time.

I saw that Wendy was not really that energetic in class, and had her head down on the desk for most of the first half of class, so I figured she was tired. Then I noticed she had totally fallen asleep, so I went over to wake her up. She didn't wake up right away, so I let it go. Most of what we do in that class is talk, anyway, so she wasn't missing much. She's so young that I figured if her body needed to sleep, she should just do it.

Then class ended and I wrote down her homework for her and let the other kids get ready to go while I tried to wake her up. I've never had so much trouble waking a person up in my life. I was calling her name, rubbing her back, shaking her, trying to tickle her, patting her on the cheek. One of the other kids even ran over and screamed her name at the top of his lungs, but there was nothing in all that except one of those false wake ups that kids do, then go immediately back into their kids comas. In retrospect, I should have asked them what her Korean name is, as she might have responded better to that. I ended up letting the other kids go and then the Korean teacher that they had next came in (I guess they told her) and woke her up in Korean. She asked Wendy if she was sick, but I didn't find out for sure, and I saw her still in the school a little while later, so maybe not. Honestly, though, it's not much proof she wasn't sick--kids and adults alike in Korea have to practically on their deathbeds before they can miss school or work. Anyway, crazy wake up adventure.

The second was something I heard on the recorded dictations they play in the Korean teachers' classes. Next door the teacher was playing an informative lecture that stated that even occasional smacking can be permanently damaging to kids, both physically and emotionally, and the speaker stated all this evidence to that effect. I found it ironic that this material would be part of the curriculum, considering that most Korean kids get smacked around 24-7-365 by parents and teachers. I also was kind of surprised it was allowed, since it might give the kids ideas about fighting back against abuse. But then I realized it's Korea, and ideas are discouraged from a young age, so there probably wouldn't be any trouble.