After breakfast we attended the official Opening Ceremony where we were greeted by Vice President for Student Affairs Mr. Lianhua Wang, Director of Students’ Affairs Division Ms. Wenchao Zhang and other old friends – former visiting Scholars Caddie, Ivy, and Crystal as well as Summer who visited Lander with the delegation last year. Stan Vinson did a wonderful introducing the Lander Delegation and speaking for the group as he thanked Shanghai Normal for their hospitality. After the gift exchange and our respective presentations we had two fascinating lectures on Chinese culture and history. After dinner we were treated to an evening of Karaoke! Now, when I say Karaoke I do not mean your typical “bar scene” Karaoke; I am talking first class Karaoke. Karaoke here is as follows – you enter into a LARGE facility with 85 INDIVIDUAL Karaoke rooms that are rented for small groups of friends from 5 to 50.
May 7, 2013
Today was an extremely busy day – we all were exhausted by the end of the day. We began our day with a bus ride into town to visit the Yuyuan Classical Garden which was built during the Ming Dynasty. After the garden we had lunch in The Bund district of Shanghai. After lunch, part of the group took in the sites of The Bund District (this area is full of high dollar shopping and home to banking district on the water front of the Huang Pu River) to include a beautiful flower wall that must have been at least 100 yards in length. The other part of the group visited the Oriental Pearl TV Tower; once there they ascended high above Shanghai for breath-taking views of the city. We met back up together and headed to the Shanghai Museum, the crowed jewel of Shanghai. This visit proved to be quite exquisite with amazing artifacts from many different dynasties. After our dinner we headed back to campus where we attended a musical recital for 14 students who were leaving for a semester of music study in Russia. While we were all very tired this proved to be a wonderful event for us all!
May 8, 2013
Today was a much calmer day as we toured the second campus of Shanghai Normal University, the campus where most all Freshmen and Sophomores study and stay – a campus of about 20,000 residential students. While there we visited a Chinese Painting/calligraphy class where we meet with students. While there they painted a variety of things for us to include Chinese names, paintings and sayings – the students REALLY enjoyed this. After the painting class we moved to one of their gyms and watched demonstration in Tai Chi, Women’s Kungfu Fan Dancing and Men’s Kungfu. After each performance we were invited to join them to learn about and experience what we had just seen. The day ended with dinner and a good nights rest!