May 1, 2013

Mandy is back with us today.  After breakfast (BTW so far breakfast has consisted of two hard boiled eggs, two pieces of bread, jams, and a piece of fruit) we took about an hour bus ride to the Shanghai Maritime Museum.  It was really amazing to see how the ships have evolved through the different dynasties and what why things were built the way they were/are.  The area where the museum was located was a newer development – it looked like they had come in and cleared hundreds and hundreds of acres of land, added infrastructure and vegetation and are building buildings as they grow.  The streets are good and they have goon to extensive lengths to plant vegetation all around.  After the museum we took a short ride to a newer shopping center development known as Shuyuan Village; a quaint little village area complete with a hotel, a conference center and shopping.  We ate lunch like kings at Lin Gang with what I know was at least 18 courses of food!  Unfortunately our schedule was already pushed so we did not have time to explore this area before leaving.  Leaving the village we headed to downtown Shanghai for a whirlwind visit of the Shanghai Herb Medicine Museum.  Again because our schedule got off track we only ended up with about an hour at the museum.  This proved to be very interesting visit as we were able to learn about herbal medicine through all of the dynasties as well as see some of the tradition medical equipment that was used.  Moving along we took a quick bus ride a few blocks to have dinner at Xin Wing.  Xin Wing is located on the bottom floor of a…30 to 50 story office building where the first three floors are a shopping area (mall).  The building was connected to a hotel and also to a residential high rise…quite nice and not what these country folks are used to seeing but I think quite typical for bigger cities. After our very modest (thank the lord because after the lunch we had I am not sure how we would have handled another spread like that!) but tasty dinner we were treated to a river cruise on the river.  It was an exhausting day for everyone but if felt good to get out there and “see” China!