Click here to see a full screen slideshow at Flickr.com

Shanghai, China 2009

Click here to see a full screen slideshow at Flickr.com

Everything is very new and the architecture is amazing!

The first night in Shanghai we went to a Chinese acrobat show. The acrobatics were incredible!

The 2nd morning we woke up early and headed off for a full day of touring .

You see people on mopeds everywhere, you can find people carrying children, dogs, or a full family’s load of laundry for the month on the mopeds.

Our first stop on the tour was to take a ride on the Maglev train. This is a train that runs on magnetic force. There are no wheels, the train actually levitates in the air. This is the fastest train in the world, which reaches a top speed of 431km (268mph). The ride was incredible! When another train passes you at this speed, it is so fast you miss it if you blink.

Jeremy under the sign that shows the km/hr during the ride

Typical street in Shanghai, Jeremy bought food from this street vendor.

Our next stop was the Jewish Ghetto area in Shanghai. Shanghai was one of the only cities that would allow Jewish refugees to enter. This museum, which includes the actual synagogue, is dedicated to them.

Afterward,  we headed to a silk factory, where we learned about the process of making silk materials. They showed us all the stages that a silk worm goes through. Did you know that one silk worm produces over a mile and a half long thread of silk in each cocoon? Pretty amazing. In this picture, the woman is using a machine to extract the silk thread from the cocoon and putting it on a spool. What I thought was going to be a boring stop on the tour was actually very interesting.

After hitting a few more stops in Shanghai, we headed over to a Children’s Palace. This is where the children go to learn all different talents. Dance, singing, karate, calligraphy, ballet and many other forms of art are tought here. The children attend these at minimum of 5 days a week, many go 7 days a week.

We watched these girls perform ballet, they are so rediculously cute!

Little girl perfecting her painting techniques.

]]> http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2009/04/16/shanghai-china/feed/ 0 http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2009/04/16/dalian-china-video-highlights/ http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2009/04/16/dalian-china-video-highlights/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:25:26 +0000 Lauren and Jeremy http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/?p=443 Here is a short video of the highlights from Dalian, China.

Enjoy!

We took a ride on an antique tram for a few blocks. We did this to see how the locals get around.

Then we had a visit to a local family’s house. They brought us in to see how they live an we also were able to cook some dumplings with them. This is the lady of the house presenting us with Chinese art that she made for us all. Note that she entertained in her pajamas…my kind of woman!

This was a photo of her son, note that they don’t wear diapers, but instead just cut a giant hole in their pants….Jeremy’s kind of outfit!

Lauren learning how to make dumplings!

Man getting a haircut on the side of the road…nice! Apparently it’s very common.

The terrifying array of fish that were in the entry way of the restaurant we had lunch in. Not a good sign!

Jeremy tasting the fish head….awesome! He’s so daring!

Quick tour of the local museum…

We took a cable car up the mountain to the Dalian Forest

We will be posting all of the highlights from Shanghai and Japan in a 3 days. The Japanese gov’t. blocks all communications from our ship. No Internet or Cellular communications

We finally made it to Beijing on Sunday afternoon. We left Ft. Lauderdale Saturday morning at 8:00am.  Once we arrived we headed straight to our hotel, the Shangri-La which is really nice in the middle of Beijing. We  headed straight to the room for some zzzzz.

Once we woke up from our nap, we headed downstairs to have a dinner provided by the cruise in the hotel. It was buffet style and very good. Once we were fully engorged with food, we headed back up stairs to sleep for the night.

More posts to follow soon with pictures

ps. we are 12 hours ahead of you.