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上海 Day 1

China day in the life Friends NSLI-Y sightseeing 上海， Today was our first full day in the beautiful city of 上海. The hotel we were staying at, Regal Hotel, had a rating of 6 stars. Right? I didn't even know that was possible. This hotel was so nice and so fancy. But since it was so nice, they over charged you for everything. Even the WiFi was 3 元 per minutes, but since we were a group, we got it for free. The breakfast in the hotel was unreal. Today for breakfast, they had a giant buffet set up with a variety of food. They had everything from baked beans to dumplings, and I ate everything. Hands down the best breakfast I had in China.

After that heavenly breakfast, we went to Old Shanghai. First, we visited Sun yat sen's house. His house, along with his neighbors, had been turned into a museum in 2006. We followed a tour guide around the two houses, viewing a learning many things about him. He was born into a poor family on November 1, 1866 and studied medicine in Hong Kong at the age of 21. In 1905, he established the first Chinese Revolution Party which led to his overthrow of the monarchy in 1911.  Four years later he married his wife, Song chingling. Together they moved to 上海 where he wrote a famous book that I had never heard of. But inside the book was his dreams of China's future developments, many of which came true.


Once we finished viewing the entire museum, we headed to lunch. There we had 汤包, 上海 famous soup dumplings. Afterwards, we went to Hengshan Road, a street market. We were given 2 hours to walk around, shop, and take pictures before we had to met back at the Starbucks. Some of my friends went to a Phone Repair shop to get their screen's replaced, because they had shattered. All was well until the men tried to charge them double for it. Sydney, being in the advanced class, yelled at them in Chinese. But they did not budge. It wasn't until we told them we were with the US government and would call our director, did they agree to the original price. It was pretty exciting to watch the argument unfold between the men and Sydney, but I know it was also very stressful for her. After the phone situation, we walked around the shopping mall multiple times before we had to met.

We then went to another shopping road, Nangin Road. Unlike the last, Nangin Road was filled with department stores instead of little shops. It was not exciting so Skylar, Merrick, and I sat in a coffee shop and enjoyed the WiFi and AC for most of the time.