Anyway to the pictures:
The hostel I stayed at was a cool older Chinese style building that was right next to a canal and on one of the main historical sight seeing roads. It was still really cheap too, my room was one that housed 6 people.
There were a lot of people dressing up and getting photos taken from a photo agency located right on the canal. Some wore old style dresses and kimonos, some were in Mao era uniforms, and I even saw a couple in the stereotypical French clothing of a black and white striped shirt with a red scarf.
This one was from the Opera Museum that showed off some old style stages and such.
There was a guy selling a bunch of birds right outside the zoo.
This is from a pet grooming place.
Right outside of a pet shop.
I have seen these posters up all over Shanghai and in the neighboring suburbs and towns. I am pretty sure it is a wanted poster of a guy who murdered someone.
The next three are from the master of nets garden. It is one of the more famous ones in Suzhou. There was a Chinese man there who started talking to me and then I couldn't really shake him when i just wanted to walk around and see the garden. He wanted to practice his English because he was going to take some sort of test about gardens and giving English tours or something. So he just followed me around and told me about the place.
I saw a bunch of Chinese people lining up outside of this place. Usually when that happens there is good food to be found so I gave it a try. I'm not sure what to call them but they were pretty good.
A bunch of people were sitting around different places along the canals and doing sketches, I think they may have been students. I met a Chinese architecture student at the hostel who was very friendly. He offered me some sort of fruit I'd never seen before and ate incorrectly, trying to eat what was the shell. We ended up going to dinner and he paid for my meal which was nice. His English name was Sphinx so I assume he enjoys Egyptian architecture. He told me that for the semester he was supposed to go around China and search for jobs, while doing so he stops at places to look at the architecture. He told me he didn't like Shanghai because of all the tall ugly buildings. A lot of the building in Shanghai are kinda ugly but they are built to be used. Sphinx also hitchhikes around China, taking rides with truckers. He told me was was going to try to get to Beijing this way which is a long way off.
The next six are from the humble administrators garden, another famous one in Suzhou. This one was a bit price to get in, 60rmb, but it was really big and worth seeing. I saw it on my last day there, I decided I would just walk to the train station to catch my ride to Shanghai and stopped here on my way.
It was a good trip, there are a ton of gardens and museum so it was impossible for me to see it all in the 3 nights I stayed there.
Other than that things are going fairly well in Fudan. I have a decent amount of projects due soon and finals will come soon enough. My finals finish on June 14th but I can stay in my dorm for later. So I am planning a trip to Hong Kong after finals to meet an intentional student friend I met at W&J from there last semester along with another student from France. After that I will go to South Korea for the month of July to do my Magellan project and will also likely continue my blog, though the title Fudan Adventure will be obsolete by then.
I have a few Chinese friends here though they can be a bit hard to really get in touch with. Most are really busy all the time and some take 10 classes a semester. The one I see the most is my language partner whom I enjoy talking to and practicing with. She is liberal by Chinese standards and the next subject she wants to talk about is protesting, which is not something China is well known for allowing. We haven't gotten into politics too much yet but I am interested to hear as much from different Chinese perspectives as possible. Other then the Chinese students, most of my international student friends are from Scandinavian countries. So I always get to hear about how great their social systems are and am jealous about their lack of huge student debts. I was told that even foreigners who go to Norway for education are funded by the Norwegian government and receive free education. So I might actually consider that when applying for graduate schools in my eventual future.
Since I mentioned the walk to the bund with my language partner in my previous post as well I will put some pictures up from that too. It took a long time to make the walk, as you can see it was daylight when starting, but the weather was nice and it let me see a lot of the city.
Shanghai's main skyline, probably the biggest/most famous sight of the city, along with Nanjing Road.
She told me I had to try using Chinese to ask a person to take our picture. So I told her she had to ask a foreigner in English to do the same thing. The first picture is from me asking and the second is from her (Xiao Ting is her given name).
That is all for now, I am up really late but my sleep cycle is really screwed up at the moment, luckily my class tomorrow is in the afternoon.
-Michael
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