Day 9 - Shanghai

As shocking as it may seem, we once again awoke to a gray and cloudy day.  Today's agenda was pretty simple.  A trip to visit the Pearl Tower to get a view of the city, then some shopping, then a night at the theater to watch the acrobats of Shanghai.

Jimmy told us that it was the start of the Moon Festival.  This is an annual pilgrimage home for people all over the country.  As such, it also meant that the locals would be out and about seeing the sights too.  So when he told us that we would have to wait for hours at the Pearl Tower to go up, and that there were a couple other tall buildings we could go up sooner instead, we jumped at the chance.

We ended up going to the observation deck of the Jin Mao Tower.  It was a nice view, though a bit overcast.  We did get to see the Pearl Tower.

 And there was a view down the middle of the building as well.

 We also got to pose with Haibo, the World Expo mascot.  Some thought he looked like Gumby. 

 I thought he looked more like a sworl of toothpaste.

 The building next to the Jin Mao Tower is locally known as the bottle opener because of the shape.  But it is really called the Shanghai World Financial Center.  It is currently the tallest building in Shanghai, but will be surpassed soon by the under construction Shanghai Tower being built a couple of blocks away.

 Of course, there were a few things that seemed out of place in Shanghai China...

 But overall it is a very lovely city.

 We visited the Bund area next.  With views of modern and ever changing Shanghai...

 Right across the river from the European inspired architecture of the old world.

 Dad, naturally, was a source off picture taking frenzy by the locals...

 We then went to a huge shopping area, where we all scored some nice swag at excellent prices.  I have no pictures of this because I had planned on doing most of my souvenier shopping here, and we were given a grand total of about 45 minutes to do it.  No time for photos.

That night we saw the Shanghai Acrobats, a thouroughly enjoyable troupe.  My favorite were the "Hat Guys"  Seen here stacked on each other doing their thing.

 They each had three hats.  One hat was on a head and the other two were in the air somewhere.  It was good fun.  There was also this 8 year old kid who did the old stack-the-chairs-really-high-and-wave-from-the-top thing.

 It was a good show, and a great way to spend our last night in China.

This shot is for my sister.  She told me before we left that she had heard that Chinese toddlers didn't use diapers, they just had slits in thier pants and their parents cleaned up after them.

Sure enough, most of the toddlers we saw had the open backed pants!  This little guy was squatting to pick up and put down that water bottle, so we didn't see him "in action".  Which really was OK.

More Later