TJ and Kris in Shanghai Dec. 23rd - a full day!

Sorry the posts are out of order! Hope you enjoy them anyway.

Here is our day on the 23rd of December. It was a full day starting with Yangs Dumplings!  These dumplings are also a favorite with my Dad, Charlene and Aileen! They are so good that they have been written up in the NYT's Travel Section - 36 hours in Shanghai. Yangs has about three locations but I only know two of the locations.   

 Kris's Dad, Ken and her brother Scott full and satisfied!

Off to our next adventure in Shanghai - the Expo! 

The Expo is officially closed, but the Chinese Pavilion re-opened on Dec. 1 and will remain open until May 2011.  The Expo in Shanghai ran from May 1 - Oct.31 2010 and 72 million people attended.  About 2% or 1,440,000 people were from abroad.  The remaining  70,560,000 were Chinese nationals who came to visit the Expo.  Most attended at the 'request' and expense of the government.   Free tickets were given out and companies would close for the day and the employees would be bused in so they could spend the day enjoying the Expo.  The cost of the ticket was about $24.00 USD or 160RMB.  With many people making about 100RMB a day it truly was a gift from the government to be able to visit the Expo.

We arrived at 9:30am bought our tickets - 20 RMB per person or $3.08 USD; And then proceeded to wait in line, a line which moved along like any line at Disney. Good flow, moving you from one corralled area to another. Then finally into the elevator and up to another waiting area until the doors of the movie theater opened and everyone  "rushed" in to get a good seat in the HUGE movie theater - time invested in waiting to get in one hour!  That's pretty good when you consider during the Expo people waited as much as 9 hours to get into some Pavilions.  The most popular pavilion with the Chinese, besides there own pavilion - Saudi Arabia!  Who would have guessed that one?

Here we are waiting in line.

The movie was really good, showing the 'rise of Shanghai' from the 1960's to present day and all the people who helped create this new 'better city better life'.  That was the slogan for the Expo - Better city, Better life.  After that it was all a bit boring.  The rest of Pavilion, all 5 floors were less then interesting.  I did enjoy the water fall which was between two sheets of glass that somehow created pictures.  I suppose water was shot out at different intervals to create the images, I though that was quite clever.  And the bronze statue of the warrior with his four horses was magnificent.

It's a 1,061-kilogram (2,334.2 pounds) bronze Chariot and Horse of China's Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) The work, four horses drawing a chariot steered by an armed warrior, is about one meter (about 3 feet) tall and three meters (9 feet) long. The sculpture is half life size. The sculptures were unearthed in 1980 among the terracotta soldiers in Xi'an, the capital city of Shaanxi Province. It is representative of Chinese civilization of more than 20 centuries ago.

After the Expo we all wanted to go to a hot pot restaurant for lunch.  As we were on the other side of town we didn't know of one but Jason, our trusted driver had a recommendation for us and it turned out to be a great choice!

We each had out own individual hot pot filled with a delicious soup and we could pick and choose among the vegetables and meat and place them in our pot to cook and then eat with a yummy dipping sauce.  You could consider this Chinese fondue.  It's much healthier then the cheese venison that's for sure. 

We then proceeded to the river walk to enjoy the view of the Bund!

The river walk, as you can see was flooded, due to the high tide. I had never seen that before.

And the only think left to do on this day is go to dinner.....and we did, at our favorite Italian restaurant Bella Napoli.