FINALLY!

Finally we had enough time and energy to go sightseeing around Shanghai! I have been working extremely hard all week, hard enough to maybe give myself carpal tunnel, which is why a break was much needed. So yesterday we made our plans...get up early and head to Yu Yuan (the famous garden and tea house in Old Town), and then if we had time, to go to the fabric market that was supposedly nearby. This morning, Joanna, Mun (my roomie) and I got up and got ready to go and by 12:30 were walking through Old Town to the garden. As soon as we set foot in the gardens it was like "big city" Shanghai disappeared. We were literally in another world, and it was incredible. I have never seen anything so beautiful that just looking at it makes you feel more at peace and happy and calm. It was amazing and giant. We thought it was just a small garden, but there were more doors and more small paths and different areas. We spent several hours there just walking around enjoying the serenity of the place. 

Lovely ladies in a lovely place!

Amazing, right?

Look! Twins!

I want to live here.

By the time we finished there, we were absolutely starving. We thought we would try the local tradition of xiao long (I think that is the pinyin pronunciation)...a type of dumplings. We waited in line for almost a half an hour. In the end, they were good, but not really worth the thirty minute wait or the 12 RMB we each spent on them.

The horrific line.

The reward for waiting!

Then we made our way through the bazaar, trying to get out and of course getting side tracked by all of the gorgeous things people were selling. We ended up finding a shop that had a few things on sale, they were quite cheap, so we indulged a little and actually shopped! It was very exciting. Later we found the "dollar store" (though here it's more like the 5-10 RMB store) and went crazy. It was delightful. 

Apparently they do celebrate Christmas...sort of....this was one of the stalls...it was weird.

Joanna decided to be traditional Chinese.

By then it was almost 4 o'clock, but we decided that we still wanted to go to the fabric market. After all it was only a short walk away looking at the map. So we walked...and walked...and found some street vendors to buy more delicious Chinese food from...and walked...and finally found the market we were looking for (or one of them anyway). It was absolutely overwhelming. There was fabric everywhere. At the front were all of the silk stalls, then the cottons, then the suiting fabrics, then cashmere and wool and coat materials. And each shop had its own tailor. It was crazy. But the vendors were very calm compared to everywhere else I've been. There was no yelling "Miss! Miss! Have a look!" etc...we just kind of wandered from place to place until we found the right fabric. I had my first piece made! I get to pick it up on Saturday and I am super excited. 

This concluded our sightseeing...or so we thought, until we realized that we could take the double decker sight-seeing tour bus to get back to the dorms! We sat on the top deck in the open air and actually enjoyed seeing some more of Shanghai. We felt like complete tourists...but that's okay...it's what the day was all about!