Shanghai in a Day

Knee-How! (Hello in Chinese…not how you spell it but this gives you a better idea of what it sounds like)

First and foremost, we have a birthday to celebrate. For those of you that didn’t know, my dad (also known as “Slick Willie” to some of you) turned 50 on Sunday, February 21, 2010. I want to wish you a very happy birthday dad and I am sorry I missed your party. I wish I could have been there! I still can’t believe your 50!?! Not many people have dads like you and I thank God each and every day for you! Love ya more than you know pops, I couldn’t have asked for a better dad and I am who I am today because of you. Love you and hope you had a great birthday!!

The picture above is from our day of shopping and walking around (you will read about all of this below). From left to right you have Austin, Me, Kevin, and Buddy. The picture was taken right before another one and we were all cracking up at something Austin had said so one of the girls took a pic and it turned out to be a really good candid shot. Behind us is Shanghai harbor and you can see some of the giant buildings on the other side of the water in the distance.

Comment Shout-Outs!! – Everyone from Henderson Hills. I was thinking about you all a lot last weekend during Big Weekend, and it killed me to not be there with you guys. I pray that God spoke to each and every one of you and that your weekend was incredible. Love you and miss you all!! Nat – sorry about the sushi thing, guess we will just have to hit up the other normal food places haha. It’s amazing how much I miss the Norman food joints, I will just have to come up during finals week and distract you! Hope all is well in Theta world…miss ya girl! Logan – Brotha what’s up?!?!? So since I had some free internet time in port I was able to go back over the past blogs and I noticed your one from like 5 posts ago that I must have just barely missed. My bad man I feel bad, but I get really limited time on the ship so I just log on long enough to check the comments from the last blog and then post my new one. I didn’t hear that you all had switched to middle school worship leaders but that is really cool! I know it might be weird at times cause you miss the high schoolers but that is another area that you will have experience in that God will use to help you in the future. He is preparing you man! As far as Valentine’s Day goes, I’m sure you didn’t have 1 date but more like 8, and don’t lie to me because I will find out. If Natalie Parker and Hollis are reading this keep it up! Alex I know you are bugging him so just do it double and blame it on me haha. Dude that is sick that you guys got a 6 day weekend. I bet that was much appreciated by all you guys. Dude N64 is where it’s at on snow days! That’s awesome! Never saw Up, heard good things tho. Star Trek is so tight, glad you finally experienced it! And Book of Eli was so freaking good wasn’t it! My second favorite Denzel movie behind Remember the Titans! Heck yeah you are still being harassed! Because it is true and there is no escaping that reality!! Know I am messing with you in spirit every time Alex says something! Dude God is mysterious but it is a wonderful type of mysterious! I wish I was there to talk about it too man…but we got all summer coming up! Hope you are enjoying school (as much as you can lol), love ya bro!

Alright so I know it has been awhile since I last blogged and I am sorry about that! I have been on the China trip of a lifetime the past 8 days and haven’t had access to a computer until yesterday. As I sit down to write about my time in China I have no clue where to begin. I have literally been going non-stop for the past 7.5 days and I am worn out in the best way imaginable. Seeing that I have 8 days worth of stuff to tell you all about there is no way I can fit it all in one blog without writing an overwhelming amount. I have decided to simply split my China adventure into 1, 2, or 3 day segments as I see fit and upload the posts as quickly as I can get them done (after all I only have 2 days until I reach Vietnam). So basically what I am saying is that I might be posting 3-5 different blogs about China I just don’t know yet; and I don’t know how fast I will be able to write them so I might upload more than one in the span of a day or it might take me a week to finally upload everything about China. Just have to wait and see I guess haha. Alright no enough talk…let me tell you about China!!!!!

I didn’t make any expectations going into China because I didn’t know what to expect in a country that is so diverse and different than anywhere I have ever been. Definitely a great idea!! China was awesome and mainly because I let myself experience it for what it really was, not what I wanted it to be or expected it to be. Another big bonus was the fact that the first couple days we were there happened to be the last few days of the Chinese New Year celebration. Yeah I said Chinese New Year, and you know what that means…….fireworks!!!!!!! During this specific span of time you can set off fireworks anywhere in the city and it is completely legal! So we would be walking or driving down the street and all of the sudden a strand of blackcats would go off or a mortar would explode right over your head. Definitely something I could get used to!! Jarrett let me just tell ya, we definitely could have gotten into some serious trouble together!! America needs to take notes and allow this kind of behavior in our city streets…I mean only like a couple days around the 4th of July…think of how awesome that would be?!?!

China was a unique country in many ways. First off the food is absolutely incredible! It wasn’t hard at all to simply eat the Chinese food. A lot of the dishes we were served/purchased were similar but different enough so that we didn’t get bored. Second, the air quality in China is pretty much what you hear about on the news. Every day there is just thick smog hanging in the air which prevents you from seeing the blue sky and sun. Think of a real thick fog right above the building that doesn’t leave and is constantly there. I personally didn’t like this and would rather have an Oklahoma sky any day; and since none of us were used to it we all had really runny noses the whole trip because of the amount of dust and crap in the air. Another thing was the people. They were way friendlier than the Japanese as far as simply passing someone on the street. If you smiled and waved at someone they would smile back and acknowledge you instead of avoiding eye contact. It was also cool because we were at a lot of the big touristy spots in Xi’an, Beijing, and Hong Kong (you will read about these cities in the coming blogs) so we also were running into Chinese tour groups. It was fun waving to them from the buses and seeing them get excited to see American tourists doing the same thing as them. The Chinese people were amazing, hospitable, and considerate which makes leaving China even more difficult.

Day 1 in China was so much fun! The morning started with a mandatory diplomatic briefing at 8 am where two members of the U.S. consulate in Shanghai came aboard to brief us on certain Chinese customs, rules, regulations, etc. that we should be aware of as Americans traveling throughout the country. Some of the information was helpful but most of it was routine stuff that applies to traveling anywhere and not just China. The briefing lasted a little over an hour and afterwards we sat around the ship waiting for the customs/immigration process to begin. We were called according to our seas starting around 10 am and the ship was cleared (we were allowed to get off) around noon. Clearing customs/immigration was very easy despite having to get our temperature taken to get off. The group I hung out with for the first day consisted of Austin, Buddy, Kevin, Natalie, Abby, Allyssa, and Mem. Our first priority was to get Yuan (Chinese Currency) and our second priority was to get food…I mean the food was really priority numero uno but to get food we had to have Yuan to pay with so getting money became priority number one by default. There was a ton of SASers at the ATMs so that took awhile but eventually we were able to get cash and start our search for an authentic Chinese restaurant. We walked up to this one restaurant and realized that it was a hot-pot restaurant; the only thing written in English on the outside of the building was a sign that said “Come a pot of lamb spinal cord” so we were like “Yep, we have to eat here now.” Two of the girls weren’t too excited at first because of the sign but soon realized that it was a normal restaurant. We walked in, got a table, and luckily our waiter spoke a little English. He was really cool and was more interested in where we were from and what we were doing than taking our order. It was nice seeing hospitality like that in a waiter right off the bat and made the experience much more enjoyable. The restaurant was very traditional and our meal was awesome! It was a huge pot of broth with mutton (lamb), cabbage, yams, potatoes, some random Chinese veggies, and then we added some dumplings and beef for good measure. You let everything boil in the pot in the center of the table and then help yourselves as you get hungry. Ahhhhhh it was soooooooo bomb!!! Then I got this huge 1.5 liter coke with my meal that was less than $1 U.S. In total, when it was all said and done, we each paid around $6 U.S. for the whole meal and our drinks and we were stuffed!!

After lunch we headed out into Shanghai to do some shopping. We started out just walking around aimlessly and seeing what we could find to do. After seeing the port area and some random stuff we decided to take these motorized rickshaws to an area called the Tao Bao Market. Okay so these motorcycle rickshaw things were intense!! There were 8 of us so we split up into 4 pairs and headed off. The part where we sat was facing backwards so we couldn’t see where we were going. Austin and I were in the front so I was able to get a really cool video of us swerving in and out of traffic with the other 3 rickshaw things (don’t really know what they are called cause they are definitely not traditional rickshaws) trying to keep up. That was a cool experience and I’m pretty sure I could have died because we were cutting off buses and other cars and since we were facing backwards we didn’t even know it until we were passing the bus that almost hit us.

Anyways we eventually made it to the Tao Bao Market safe and sound and without getting lost. The market was indoors and consisted of a 5 story building that was full of individual vendors lined up in rows with escalators in the middle. You could barter for everything in the market and most vendors sold the same things so you could shop around till you found the best deal. My favorite was finding people close to each other that had the exact same stuff and pitting them against each other to see which one would give you the best deal. We all bought souvenirs…oh and Daniel, if you are reading this I got you the SWEETEST gift ever!! Like I almost got myself the same thing but I didn’t want to spend that much. After shopping for a couple hours we walked around the streets a little more before starting a search for a place to eat dinner. We were set on finding another authentic Chinese restaurant and refused to eat at one of the numerous KFCs or Pizza Huts we passed. We decided to try our hand at a version of Shanghai “fast food.” Luckily they had picture point menus so we were able to order by pointing and holding up fingers for what we wanted and how many of each. I got this teriyaki chicken with steamed rice and Chinese Mango Tea. Everyone got various things and Kevin even got a plate of pig’s ear for all of us to try; everyone tried it and was able to get it down, but some people definitely did not like it. I on the other hand actually thought it tasted pretty good…oh well, guess I’m just weird (but you guys already knew that I’m sure).

After our Chinese fast food adventure we headed back to the ship to drop off our souveniers and meet up with more people who had done different things during the day. Oh and sidenote about China – taxis were so cheap! For a ride across town back to the port it was less than $3 U.S., AND we got to split it between 4 of us (8 people, 2 cabs) so we all ended up paying less than a buck when it was all said and done. Much better than Hawaii and Japan…I never even took a cab in Japan cause it was so expensive. Anyways, after meeting up with more people on the ship we headed out into the city to see what we could find to do. We ended up at a nightclub called G2 that was in this shopping mall. I stayed long enough to try duck tongue (which was actually good too believe it or not haha) then I left because I didn’t want to spend my time in China at a club. I would rather walk around and see the city in a different light (literally haha). I wandered around the city for awhile enjoying some time to myself, took some pics, then hitched a ride with one of the cheap taxis back to the ship to pack and get some sleep for my awesome trip to Xi’an
and Beijing the next day!!

I could write for the next month and not even scratch the surface of the things I witnessed, the friends I made, the adventures, the laughs, the close-calls, the breathtaking scenery, the indescribable experiences, even the traveling from place to place. Like I said earlier I didn’t really know what to write and this is just a taste of what I did. When I see you all in person and I have pictures I will be able to go into greater detail but this will have to do for now.

As I look back on the hustle and bustle of China, one thing constantly sticks out. The immense amounts of people everywhere! Everyone knows China is the most populous country in the world but I guess it finally just hit me as we were squeezing through the crowds and making our way through literally millions of people. The coolest part for me was the fact that each and every one of those Chinese people was individually created by Christ. I mean God knows each one of them by name, millions and millions of people, think about that for a second. It’s crazy cool!!!!! Even in something seemingly tiny and insignificant such as a name, God’s omniscience and glory are constantly on display. Just some food for thought.

I will post again ASAP. This is just the start of my China blogs. Hope you all are doing awesome! Praying for ya!

T