Travel to China: Days 1 – 4

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The mission of the Sister Cities: Travel to China to initiate a sister city relationship between Valparaiso and a Chinese counterpart, sister-cities-china1as well as establish and advance relationships with Chinese officials, businesses, and citizens for the mutual exchange of ideas and investment opportunties.

Sister City relationships foster economic, cultural, and governmental exchanges that strengthen both cities. Goals include

  1. Economic Development
  2. Educational realtionships
  3. Governmental exchange
  4. Promotion of international tourism between cities
  5. Cultural exchanges such art, music, and performing arts.


Day 1 in China. A message from Craig Phillips
Ni hao!! We arrived at Shanghai Pudong Intl'l airport after a 14 hour flight and 3-hour flight delay at O'Hare. Checked into the Charms Hotel in downtown Shanghai, which is nice. We went out to dinner at a very nice Restaurant called Lang Yi Fang, which is in a shopping center ...which overlooks the Huangpu River. Tomorrow we go to the World Expo for the whole day. That should be lots of fun!


Day 2 from Craig.
We spent the entire day at the Shanghai World Expo 2010. What a sight to see!! It was enormous. We took a shuttle bus from our hotel to the site, and started with the north side of the Huangpu River where many companies (including Coca Cola) and individual cites all over the world have pavilions..., then took a ferry boat over to the south side where most of the countires of the world have pavilions. We were able to go through a few of the country pavilions including Lithuainia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Most of the pavilions had very long lines, some 3-4 hours including the Germany and USA pavilions. We couldn't get anywhere near the China pavilion, the main site of the expo, since the wait was over 6 hours!! The pavilions had very interesting architecture and displays. What a busy and fun filled day. Saturday we will tour the Old City and take a boat cruise on the Huangpu River.

Day 3 from Craig sister-cities-china2
Well, the word for today was WET! Lots to talk about today. It rained all day. Even though it was a miserable and dreary day weather-wise, it was a fun day in terms of activities. After a large chinese breakfast (which is kindof like a funky brunch type affair), we headed out to visit Shangha...i's Old Town District and the Old Garden. The old garden was a very pretty sort of combination of a garden and open air museum, at least as much of it as I could see in the pouring rain ducking in and out of buildings and hanging out under covered walkways. The old town area is VERY touristy. At one point, we ducked into a chinese Starbucks to get out of the rain. Same exact place as ours , just...smaller.

After visiting the Old Town and gardens, we went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition. It was a five story building like a museum or gallery dedicated to planning Shanghai, past and present. The highlight of the exhibition is the scale model of the entire city (abosolutely every building) of Shangh...ai, which is the home of 20-30 Million people. We also walked on Nanjing Road, which is the busiest and most popular shopping street in all of China. One of the main highlights of Nanjing Road was the visit to the chinese mega supermarket. You could get everything you ever desired including live eels, turtles, crabs. It was quite a sight.

Finally, after we finished walking the length of Nanjing Road we came to the area known as the Bund, which is the riverbank on the old side of downtown Shanghai, and sort of like China's Wall Street. We enjoyed taking pictures of the river, buildings on the Bund and the other new side of the River among ...the throngs of Chinese. After all of that, we took a cab to a very upscale little village area known as XinTiandi, which is chock full of nice WESTERN coffee houses, restaurants, and galleries. Shanghai is a very international city. Tomorrow we head to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province from which we begin the official sister cities portion of our trip.

Day 4
Today we took the Shanghai subway to the Jin Mao Tower, and took the elevator up to the 88th floor observation deck for a bird's eye view of the city. Although it was a bit hazy, the views were impressive. We loaded up and our driver took us 3 hours south to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province and base ...for our trip for the next several days. We took a long driving tour and walked on the Su Causeway which crosses the absolutely beautiful West Lake here in Hangzhou. Hangzhou with its 7 million people, is a beautiful city on the lake, and is a top tourist destination in China. Tomorrow we head to visit the first of the 2 sister cities candidates, Jiaxing, about an hour from here, where we will also stay for the next two nights.