Izac's Understanding: Observations in China part 1

China was AWESOME! Don't want to live there, but the places we went to were totally mind-blowing.

We spent a couple of days in Shanghai. The city is truly international and modern. We spent the first day on a bus tour going all around the city of 20 million people. We didn't see everything, but we saw a lot. We spent a good amount of time on the Bund, which is where the foreigners were restricted for a few hundred years--particularly in the 1800 through about 1937. The buildings along the Bund are European and American in design--some of the most beautiful Gothic and Western design.

This is on the Bund.

After walking and riding around most the day--just getting adjusted to being in China and getting the feel for the tourist mindset and realizing that we would be foot sore alot--we took a boat ride along the river that splits Shanghai in half. We went around the Bund and the newer, recently developed city center area.

Click on the picture to see all. Panarama of the new city center and Bund

Bund at night

The second day in Shanghai is when our tour actually started. We went to a Shanghai City museum/expo center detailing the develop of the city itself--from a small fishing village some 2000 years ago to the primary port city of the province and China several centuries ago to the international city it became following the Opium Wars and finally to the city it has become now. Kind of boring, but it put things in to perspective for the city and for the country. People having been living in Shanghai for over 2000 years. Documented and all.

After that we walked across the street to the Shanghai History Museum. It had less to do with Shanghai and more to do with historical and cultural artifacts.

The Bronze Exhibit was the most important by far. There was a large water vessel (I'm thinking big enough to hold a 600 pound pig to cook in soup. It was commissioned by a ruler of something and the maker was given title for making it. It is awesome and impressive. And the woman who donated it to the museum has had in her family for over 400 years.

Ding food vessel with interlaced Dragons and Scale - made sometime between the early 6th century BC and 476 BC

China is freakin' OLD. It has a rich history and our Westerncentric history classes completely miss the entirety of what Asia offered to the world's cultural development. Everyone in our group who saw the Bronze Art from way back 4000-6000 years ago thought of South American art produced by the Inca, Mayans and Aztec; and the Native Americans with the tribal clothes from about the same time. The idea that our First Nation people walked across the Bering Straight is Fact, not theory. It happened . . . who knows when for sure, but it sure as hell happened.