On Sunday we traveled for about 8 hours by bus to reach Shanghai.

When we arrived we were dropped off at our hotel and we dropped our luggage off before leaving to see the city. We walked a block away from our hotel to see the skyline of Shanghai lit up at night. It was hard to see some of the buildings because there was a lot of smog, but what we could see was beautiful.

After viewing the skyline, we went to eat and then headed back to our hotel. Shanghai is known for its nightlife so we decided to see what was around. We met up with a girl named Julia and she took us to two of the best clubs in Shanghai. There are a lot more foreigners in Shanghai. When we went to clubs with more Chinese people they danced a little bit more conservatively than how many Americans dance or people from a lot of other countries. It was fun to be able to interact with people from all over the world in just one place. There were people from China, America, Serbia, Nigeria, heck, we even ran into a Penn State graduate!

This morning, we woke up and went to visit the eco-city. We saw wetlands and ways that renewable energy will be used to hopefully run a completely green city. In China, electricity is much more expensive than it is in the United States. In the eco-city, if you generate more energy than necessary, you would be able to sell this energy to the power company, put it back into the grid, and actually make a decent profit from it. They hope that the eco-city will be one of many cities to be built in this manner and that soon they will be all over China.

After visiting the eco-city, we went to the temple in Shanghai, which is one of the oldest parts of the city. We walked around the street and we were able to do some bargaining again and we finally got to eat the famous juicy dumplings. Since arriving in Beijing, both Dean Masters and Xinli have mentioned how great the juicy dumplings were, so I had pretty high hopes for these dumplings from the time I sat down in the restaurant. When we were in Xian, Xinli took me and Nate to get food and we got some juicy dumplings, so he taught me the proper technique to eating them, but not everyone knew. When our dumplings came out, he said, “Watch! I’ll teach you how to eat juicy dumplings.”

When you eat a juicy dumpling, you first have to grab it by the top where all of the dough comes together. Then you have to dip it into your soy sauce. This is crucial so that the dough doesn’t get stuck to your mouth as you are making the first incision. You then have to bite into your juicy dumpling and suck the juice out of the dumpling. It is so delicious! You then dip the dumpling in your soy sauce and eat, repeating the process until the whole dumpling has been devoured.

I am glad Xinli has found such good places to get food over the years. Shanghai juicy dumplings will forever be in my heart.

After eating juicy dumplings, we went to Nanjing Street, the largest pedestrian walking street in China. There were a lot of shops and stores to visit. They had a mixture of name brand stores and local shops. After visiting Nanjing street we went back to the hotel and I ate more food. I had something that tasted like a hamburger in a way. It had pork on the inside and then a doughy bun wrapped around it. It was really good. So far, the food in Shanghai has been very good. Tomorrow we will be viewing the city from a skyscraper and visiting Exxon Mobil. We don’t get much sleep, but all of the great experiences are well worth it.

Unfortunately the WiFi at our hotel is not very good so I haven’t been able to upload any photos 🙁

Location: Shanghai, China