Our second over night train was 19 hours and took us from the ancient capital of Xi'an to the modern wonder of Shanghai. We arrived around noon the next day. The berths in this train were a lot more open so it was less stuffy and suffocating. However, it was hard to change or do anything with out an audience. The beds in the trains are only about two and a half feet wide, so it's pretty tricky to sleep with out rolling out, especially with the train rocking and a rolling.
Once we arrived in Shanghai I was relieved to find that the air was much fresher then it was in Xi'an. Shanghai is China's largest city with a population of over 22 million. That's close to the population of Canada! It's also hosting the 2010 World Expo.
After we had checked into our hostel we began with the usual orientation walk. Even though there are so many people in Shanghai, the city is suprisingly clean with minimal pollution. Looking around at my surroundings I was feeling very small and insignificant amongst all the towering sky scrapers - the biggest and most elaborate I've seen in my entire life. Definitely not Vancouver. Most of them seemed to have some unique architectural feature. It was almost as though each one was trying to out do the next in their splendour and modernity.
If I thought the city was amazing during the day, then I was totally blown away when nightfall came and the entire place bacame this futuristic glowing metropolis. It was like Vegas on steroids. Club music thumped from every street corner and the arrays of twirling colourful lights lit up the night sky. Whole skyscrapers were covered in colour-changing lights like cameleons that put on their own light show.
The best way to view the city by night is to take one of the many equally brightly lit pleasure cruiser boats along the river. Our group hopped on one and, with beers in hand, we made our way to the top deck to watch the show from the best vantage point.
It was truely amazing. I felt as though I had walked on to some big buget sci-fi movie. I've never seen such a futuristic city-scape. I felt this great contrast between the ancient wonders I had visited earlier (The great Wall, and Terra Cotta Warriors) and this incredible modern wonder.
Unfortunately, my cold got the worst of me and I wasn't able to do much sight-seeing. We did however go to this great big Bazaar in a surprisingly ancient market place. It was fun at first but as the day went on it kept getting more and more crowded. Nudging turned to pushing and pushing turned to shoving and pretty soon I was right mad and ready to serioiusly injure the next person that touched me. There is no such thing as personal space in China. So we sought refuge in an old beautiful Chinese garden. It was very tranquil. The flowing water and swaying trees were very peaceful and I calmed down some.
Later in the evening we had the privledge to see the Shanghai acrobats. Such amazing little people... and they are actually little. They were very talented and the show was amazing. I was a little concerned about the state of some of their equipment however, it looked a little questionable and past it's prime.
At the end of our Shanghai adventure we prepared ourselves to board the longest train journey of our trip - 25 hours (uhg!) - to Yangshou. I'm sure that we'll all be the best of friends by the end...hopefully.
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