Dongguan

I'm taking a Geography of the Pearl River Delta class which includes a couple of field trips. This was our trip to mainland.

We went to a small part of the city of Dongguan, a town called Tangxia. We got on a bus in Shenzhen and so we drove through both cities and the countryside in between. It looked much more like China than I was expecting. We took the subway to Shenzhen and already it was a world apart from Hong Kong. It seemed almost impossible that it could change so drastically, so quickly.

Anyway, the buildings were prematurely aged (because they must keep both building and maintenance costs extraordinarily low), unmarked roads, things burning on the sidewalk, and piles of rubbish in the streets.

But when we arrived in Tangxia we pulled up to a huge, lavish town hall. It was shocking. This grandiose building in the middle of nothing. Just the same wide, relatively empty streets, fields of dirt, piles of rocks in the road. We were ushered inside (the building was empty, save our class) and greeted with great fanfare. They treated us like UN delegates-it was insane. Microphones for everyone, our own interpreter, a camera crew following us. They showed us a film of straight propaganda (it was in full mandarin and I still knew it was propaganda without the interpreter). It was all about how Tangxia has revolutionized industry and boasts a world-renowned golf course. We had a chance to ask questions after and someone asked about how the "financial tsunami" had effected industries in Tangxia. The mayor answered that Tangxia had escaped the ravages of the world-wide financial crisis and only experienced fluctuations which would be considered normal (but they still were required to close down a number of local factories..). Next, they brought us through a new housing plan and showed us the newly constructed housing complexes. They had evicted an entire village to build these lavish town homes (they claim that all those people were able to move into those apartments with government subsidy but I have a hard time believing that..). They toured us around and claimed that all had already been sold off (but somehow we never saw a single person there during the entirety of our tour). In fact, we didn't see a soul until we were driving to the factory. We finally saw local people-and they were living in the rundown neighborhoods we passed, not the fancy (unoccupied) villas.

They brought us to a huge, lavish museum documenting the world-renowned wonders of Tangxia and China. How "green" (as in having a lot of nature around..) and advanced and how vacationers flocked by the droves to visit. It was 4 floors of nonsense. They bragged about the large numbers of visitors who came but for some reason we were the only ones there (as always). So empty was it that they turned the lights off after we had traveled through each room..

Forgive the poor quality- I had to take them out of the bus window..

Next we went to a factory making parts for photocopiers. Tangxia is now trying to make the switch to production of electronic equipment. Everywhere we went a factory official walked next to us, occasionally stopping to leer at a worker (standing nearly on top of them). They refused to show us the worker's lodgings and we were not allowed to speak to any of the workers themselves. Though, afterwords company officials gave us a briefing about what high wages they pay their workers, including: generous vacation days, factory sports competitions, and education. But their math didn't add up-They claimed to have 2, 8 hour shifts but then claimed to have the factory producing the parts for all 24 hours, for example.

Shanghai-Day 4 & 4.5

We went to check out M50, the cool arts district in Shanghai were artists show in old warehouses. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the galleries and only a few were open, so pictures are limited:

Next we headed over to the French Concession. We had seen the outskirts a few days before and I wasn't terribly excited about it, but it turned out to be super cool.
Here is some meat hanging from a tree to dry. Right next to the laundry.
Unidentifiable scraps of meat:

The next day we only had a few hours before our flight left. We headed over to a nearby temple to check it out but admission was crazy expensive and they had already turned half of it into a shopping mall. We did, however, find a cool rock climbing wall for me to show off my mad athletic skillz.


Inside a drawer in our hotel was a book of Chairman Mao quotes, Chinese checkers, and monopoly: china edition. excellent.
We headed out for a quick stop in Hong Kong before on to Thailand!

Shanghai-Day 3

We had a lazy start to the day but once we headed out we stumbled upon some old friends from Guilin:

We finally found Yang's Fried Dumplings, right on the corner of our hotel! They definitely lived up to their reputation for best soup dumpling-we returned to eat them again before we left. Best food you'll get in Shanghai. And dirt cheap, too.

We wandered back over to People's Park and after a cold reception at the Museum of Contemporary Art and a stop by the Expo Museum we stumbled into this fellow, writing unknown messages with a water soaked brushed. I am especially fond of him.
Despite warnings from the hotel staff that it was far too complex, Jac and I managed to hop a LOCAL bus all the way to a fishing village outside the city. Famous for their unique bridges, it was packed with people selling and buying food and souvenirs. Still really great.







When I first used to visit Lauren and Jac in New York (circa 2002 and the 6th grade), I dreamed of buying up the little turtles in China town and setting them free to live in the wild, open country of Central Park. Lauren and Jacquie were less enthusiastic about the idea and it never did come to fruition. Little did they know how destined I was for China back then. They sold fish and turtles on the bridge for tourists to buy and set free in the river. By doing so you save the animals life and earn yourself a bit of good luck.

Shanghai-Day 2

These are a little out of order, apologies. We finally found the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. It is hilarious and a must do. It takes you from the Bund to the Pudong side in a little train car. While you travel, lights flash and an overhead voice comes on to explain what you are seeing, shouting things like: HEAVEN and HELL! NASCENT MAGMA!

We headed over to Old Town, which I was so excited about. It turns out they rebuilt all the old buildings (A favorite of Shanghai architectural style is to tear down a building and then rebuild it exactly how it existed before..) and it was absolutely packed with tourists. In some places we could hardly move. There was supposed to be a beautiful garden, but unfortunately it was closed for the new year.

We did get some fun street food out of it, though. Here's Jacquie with a drinkable soup dumpling and me with some fried crab.

In our search for Yang's Fried Dumpling's shop we stumbled into the first of many, many construction sites. As you may or may not know, Shanghai is hosting the World Expo this spring. So, as Beijing did for the Olympics, they are trying to clean up the city as soon as possible. Unfortunately, this doesn't just mean forcing it to rain to clear up the air quality. People are being evicted by the neighborhood and old residential buildings demolished. This was by far the most interesting part of Shanghai to me, so you'll forgive the excess of pictures.

Here you can see some of the eviction notices on the doors.






On our way to and from the nearest construction site we were accosted by dragon/lion dancers! They flew out of a nearby shop right into our lap. The old man leading them was handing out red pockets (a traditional gift for children and the unwed during Chinese Lunar New Year) containing 2 (possibly fake) yuen. He handed me one (likely thinking me a child) and patted my cheek.

The dancers paraded into shops, startling shop keepers and customers alike.