Day Trip: Tongli Adventures

China has water villages around Shanghai, so bright and early this morning we drove off to Tongli, a scenic but touristy town about 2 hours away. If you've ever been to Venice, Tongli was the slightly more run down, asian version.

"If you were dripping sweat, then I was raining!" -Erica
It was great to get out of Shanghai but it was seriously hot there. Anna got about 20 more mosquito bites in the span of 4 minutes and we were all sticky, nasty, and wet.

We took a chinese boat ride on the rivers and got to see some coramacks dive for fish. Coramacks are a type of bird that Chinese fisherman use to catch fish for them- they tie the bird's neck with string so the bird can't swallow and then train it to catch fish. Any fish the bird catches are regurgitated for the fisherman. It was awesome to see in action. The birds are tiny but they can cram in 3 or 4 fish per dive.

Tongli is famous for its water canals as well as its gardens and sex museum. They have crossbow shooting and cannonball firing too. The one thing I really wanted to do but couldn't was go in a hamster ball. I don't know the exact name of it but its a giant clear plastic ball that you can go inside and then walk, or roll on the water. The gardens were very pretty and the day trip was fun. At night we had dinner and watched a cultural/folk dance show.



Tongli's main street

view on the bridge from the left

view on the bridge from the right

Tongli's main gate

view of the courtyard from the second floor restaurant


man playing erhu



boats







pavilion ceiling in one of the gardens




outdoor pavilion

peaceful fish in a lake at one of the gardens



after pouring fish food into the water, a feeding frenzy occured!

Ni Hao! Welcome to NYU in Shanghai

I'm in SHANGHAI! Blogger is actually blocked in China, which is a bit inconvenient so I am blogging now after much trial and error. After arriving at NYU in Shanghai I basically spent the whole day moving in and doing arrival-esque things. I'm living in the off campus apartments which are about a 30 min walk to our "campus" at East China Normal Univeristy (ECNU), a college in Shanghai and my apartment is super nice and really big. I'll post some pictures later :) There was a welcome dinner for the off campus students at night (there was a separate dinner for the on-campus kids somewhere else) which was an experience. They ordered us a bowl of beef noodles with soup but since it was a takeout sort of restaurant, there were no bowls. We improvised with soy sauce dishes...an experiment which only half worked. We also got a plate of dumplings, each of which had different fillings. There was one with chives, some with carrots, and a couple with corn and peas. Definitely not the traditional kind!
NYU in Shanghai has 122 people, which is amazing considering the program started three years ago with only 18 students. There's even a fair amount of non-NYU students and some local Shanghai ones on scholarship.

Monday was our first official day of orientation and it was jam-packed. We had breakfast at ECNU's dining hall...which wasn't really breakfast since there was a strange amalgamation of breakfast, lunch, and dinner food, even desserts. Then we had a lecture from the NYU in Shanghai staff on what living in this city would be like. Some interesting things I learned:

1) Don't do drugs in China. One of the staff was out one night and witnessed a drug raid. The police blocked off the streets and dragged out two young foreign boys and threw them in the back of a van. The drug dealer was caned in the head and also thrown to the back of the van. Both were probably carted off to jail. Drug trafficking can come with a death sentence here.

2) Taxi cabs come in a multitude of colors- white, yellow, gold, aqua, dark blue, dark red, red, and black. Take only the light colored cabs. The dark red ones are actually driven by ex-convicts. Apparently at one point in time, China needed taxi cab drivers but no one thought of it as a lucrative job so they had some trouble finding drivers. The red taxi cabs are not part of the 'taxi union' and don't have to pay certain union fees. They also get a different license plate. Watch out for cars whose plates start with "BX"!

We also found out the travel options for our first weeklong break in September. We have the option of going to Guilin, Guzhou, Hong Kong & Macao, or this part of China that is essentially Mongolia. They all sound super fun but I really want to either go to Mongolia (where you can ride camels across the desert and live in a yurt) or Guilin (an outdoorsy trip filled with river rafting, rock climbing, mountain hiking, and visiting the dragon back terraces, which are absolutely gorgeous).

The lecture lasted a while but afterwards, we had lunch at a restaurant with never ending plates of super delish food. We also did a tour of our neighborhood, Zhong Shan Park, and visited the cloud 9 mall. It's got 18 stories, one floor of which is a gym. I'm still debating whether or not to get a membership. We get a sweet deal, its something like $150 for four months including classes and a swimming pool, but I've gotten such a workout the last couple days just from exploring that I might not need a full out gym.

At night we went on a boat cruise on the Huangpao river (I think I spelled that wrong). It was nice and relaxing, saw some of the famous Shanghai skyscrapers like the Pearl tower. I'm currently feeling exhausted and wishing for a new pair of legs. More updates to come! :)