Citizen of Everywhere. : Water Villages, Temples, and a Chinese Picnic

For those of you not in the "know", this week is actually a holiday week in China. Reports predict that half of China's 1.4 billion inhabitants are expected to travel. Originally, the girls and I had planned to go to Xi'an to see the terracotta army and then to Beijing to see the Great Wall. But in the end, we decided skip the travel stress and stick to Shanghai with a few short day trips.

Don't think I'm serious that traveling around this time is chaos? Please take note from live reporter on the ground, Alejandro Javier Dominguez Vasquez. He as just sent us this image!

Is it just me, or do I sense fear in his eyes?

Actually, most of the international students have decided to go to Beijing anyway. I eagerly await their reports when they are back. For me, I'm quite enjoying my laid-back week off.

It got started on Friday with a trip to the ancient village, Zhujiajiao, with my Chinese History and Culture class. It's small village outside of Shanghai with a nice garden and a lot of canals and bridges. We were led on a brief tour and then left to do our own exploring.

On Saturday, we decided to check out a local Shanghai attraction: the Jing'an Temple, a Buddhist temple in the middle of the city. I have mixed feelings about this temple. On a positive note, it is perhaps the best smelling spot in the city due to all the burned incense. On a negative note, I just couldn't get the spiritual feeling with a bunch of sky scrappers in the background! But I guess it serves as a perfect example of when traditional meets modern.

On Saturday night, we checked out another ancient village closer to Shanghai. Unfortunately we arrived too late to check out the various stalls, but we got to enjoy the nice lights. Afterwards we had dinner at a restaurant called "Little Sheep". I thought that was suppose to just be a cute name like "Hello Kitty" or something...but turns out it's a functional name since it's a hot pot restaurant where you eat mutton (sheep!) Basically, you order your meat and veggies and then hold it inside the hot soup pot with your chop sticks until its cooked. We tried mutton and lamb. Both were very good.

On Sunday, we were invited to a picnic organized by international and Chinese students. These Chinese are not from the MBA program but rather from the International Business program. The only difference is they don't have work experience so they are the same age like the international students. The park they choose was the last station on what of the subway lines so it was quite a ways out of the city but there's a reason why the Chinese chose this park. Because it's the best. It had a ton of green space and lot of activities. There was a mini amusement park, a roller-skating rink, a performance stage, a lake to rent boats, and a mini hang-glider ride thing! Again, talking with the Chinese was the funniest part. One Chinese guy whose English name is Sunshine kept asking me to show him how to dance. I did a few moves like the lawn-sprinkler and the German point. But he was looking more for a Beyonce-style of booty shaking. I told him unfortunately I can not teach him that. He also asked if I could teach him how to pole dance. I don't know where Sunshine is getting these ideas from. I hate to let him down, but no, I can not teach him how to pole dance! Honestly!