It’s been more than a month since I last posted, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

I had a lot going on personally that I felt I needed to deal with before I could focus on blogging. Plus it was the end of the semester at school, which meant writing an obscene amount of reports, giving obnoxious review tests and really just trying to get the kids and myself to a much-needed break. Oh yeah, and I went on vacation. To China! Which was awesome and which will be the starting point for my return to blogging.

So here we go. I was there for nine days – three in Shanghai and six in Beijing. I’m going to break the trip re-cap into a few posts because it’s too much for one. First up: Shanghai.

I’ll start by saying that China is an amazing place. I had been looking forward to the trip for the past few months, ever since my co-worker, Alison, and I sat in my classroom after school one day and booked our flights. Every week or so, we’d excitedly remind each other, “We’re going to China!,” particularly when one of us needed some cheering up. I always expected it would be a cool, fun experience but it was way more awesome than I had been anticipating.

We left on a Saturday morning – and by we, I’m referring to Alison, her cousin, Beth, and myself. The three of us met up with my friend Anderson, who runs the blog Chinarchy, when we got to Shanghai.

Although I expected Shanghai to be somewhat similar to Seoul, at least in the Westernization aspect, it still felt more “Asian” to me than my current home city ever has. We stayed at the Koala Garden Hostel, a cute little place on a quirky, artsy street. Almost as soon as we arrived, we set off in search of a cold beer (the whole process of getting to the airport and actually making it to Shanghai had been less-than-smooth, to say the least).

Finding a place to grab a beer was more difficult than you might expect, so we also had plenty of time to wander and marvel at how pretty the city is. All I kept thinking was, “This is what I expected things to look like when I moved to Asia.”

Shanghai has a cosmopolitan, big-city feel but there is also something quite unique about it. The architecture is simply fascinating – check out some of the photos below to see the stunning skyline. There are some buildings that look like they came straight out of a sci-fi movie, while others have clearly not been renovated in many years.

After spending the first day wandering around and seeing the Bund, our second day was a bit more organized. We headed to the Yuyuan Gardens and bazaar, where we learned how to haggle with street vendors. Well, Alison, Beth and I learned. Having lived in China for six months already, Anderson pretty much has it down to a science.

Surprisingly, the haggling was tough for me at first. I loved the idea of it, since I rarely pay full price when shopping and I love sniffing out bargains. For some reason, though, I was a little intimidated by the idea of pushing back at the vendors for lower prices. In the beginning, I was even duped by their nice-guy approach to overcharging for their wares. I got the hang of it by the end of the week, though.

As cool as it was to see the futuristic element of Shanghai, my favorite part of the time we spent there was wandering through back alleys and random neighborhoods, seeing how average people lived. It was shocking in some ways – for such a developed city, people were living in sparse and often dilapidated apartments. In one area, I noticed that the sewage system was an exposed pipe near the front door.

One thing I was continually surprised by during the trip was how much more outgoing Chinese people are than Koreans. For some reason, I expected the Chinese to be very closed off, but they were quite friendly, and a lot of the kids would stop and say hello on the street. Part of this was probably the curiosity of seeing a white person (we were stopped on several occasions by people wanting to take pictures with us). Still, it’s not this way at all in Korea. But I’ll save the comparisons between the two countries for another post.

We did have one sobering encounter with a little boy, which I still struggle with when I think about it.

We were leaving the Jade Buddha Temple (which is really just a huge, ridiculous farce that I will cover in another blog post) and heading to lunch when a little boy, about 10 years old, started walking beside us. His face was filthy and his shirt was covered in dirt and he was giving us the saddest look I’ve ever seen.

The boy clearly wanted money, and was clearly experienced at begging for it. Even after being told no, he kept pace with us, repeating the same phrases in Chinese over and over again. At one point, he stuck a finger down his throat, I assume to indicate that he was hungry. I could feel my stomach starting to turn.

It’s not that I’ve never encountered a beggar before. I’ve lived in New York City and Washington, D.C., so I’ve met my fair share of homeless, desperate people, some more heartbreaking than others. But this was the first time I’d been approached by a begging child. It was horrible.

You always see these commercials back home from the Christian Children’s Fund or some similar organization imploring you to help poor, hungry children in Asia. You hear stories about kids in foreign countries who are too poor to go to school, or who have to work or beg for money to help support their families, and yeah, it’s sad but it never really reaches you until you actually see it.

It was so disturbing. The little boy was breaking my heart but I couldn’t take my eyes off him; I just felt so terrible. I’m sure he could tell that I was torn, so he kept following us, even after everyone had told him we weren’t giving him any money. I wanted so much to give him something, but as everyone else rightly pointed out, giving him money is only going to make the problem worse. It will just perpetuate the scheme that keeps kids out on the streets begging for money in the first place. So there was really nothing we could do.

I realize that this same scene plays out every day with kids all over the world, and it’s almost overwhelming to think about. It’s tragic, and I couldn’t help but feel despair thinking about where this poor kid’s life is probably headed, if he’s already out on the streets begging and he’s only about 10 years old.

There’s probably a lot more to say on that subject, but this post is already on the long side, so I’ll wrap it up there for now.

Overall, my visit to Shanghai was a lot of fun (quite expensive, but fun) and it’s definitely a place I would visit again at some point.

So there’s part one of my trip to China. We took an overnight train to Beijing for the second leg of our vacation, and I’ll cover that part later this week. I have a few posts planned because there’s just too much to say to cover in one or two.

In the meantime, here are some photos of Shanghai’s very cool skyline and of the Bund, all taken by Anderson. Check out my flickr page for more pictures of the city.

Check out that skyline

Moon rising over Shanghai

The Bund at night, seen from the 87th floor of the Jin Mao Tower