Showdown (9.9.2009)

Writing this I am sitting on a train about to leave for Hangzhou, some 200 kilometers south-west of Shanghai. Little more than 5 euros for these seats, which might be classified in Finland as business class (soft seats with lots of space for feet). Not exactly sure though this is the right train, but let's see where we end up :).

Yesterday was another agonizing day for our feet. We woke up as early as 6 A.M. to get a glance of the lonely wolves, who do Tai Chi in the Century Park early in the morning. It was also a pretty good idea to have a breakfast picnic in the lake situated in the middle of the park. Menu included some sausage, sweet pastries, yoghurt (surprisingly good), nigiri sushis in a box, crackers, juice and a kinder bueno. Muy bueno! The park itself was neat and had some great scenery, shaped bushes and a fountain square, in which there were about 100 separate fountains in the ground, which were programmed to squirt water in some pattern, according to the song that was playing (clipping occured though) from the speakers.

After the stroll we walked via Century Road to Shanghai Science & Technology Museum. The museum as a whole was pretty normal, as there was lots of stuff that I - at least - knew already: stuff about physics, genetics, Heureka-type of wonder stuff and some network stuff that were praised from heaven to earth, how it shall change the world. And can you believe me, they actually have langaton intternetti there! Tell me something I don't know? Interesting stuff was some exhibition about different animals with lots of data about them and these cool stuffed versions, which appeared in their usual daily activities (e.g. lion killing a deer, whose intestines were shown). Another worthwhile exhibition was this geology-related tour, which had lots of info of earth's inner workings. Space exhibition was also nice in some parts. Probably the most relevant thing in the museum for me was my first touch with the 3-D (and 4-D!) movies. The downside was the movies were in Chinese with no subtitles. Oh well, the HD-quality of some verrry cool sea animals with soundtrack by Randy Edelman was enough to keep me interested for 40 minutes. The 4-D movie I mentioned was pretty authentic. There was e.g. Christopher Lloyd acting in this 25 minute flick, which had 3-D picture, but had an extra dimension: what the characters feel, you feel (externally of course :)) - when there was a storm, I would feel this breeze; whenever they got wet, I got wet; when some rats swarmed in the actors' feet, it felt that way also for me.. believe me, many rose their feet up and panicked! :)

Le Grande Finale for our Shanghai tour was - obviously - to go to a place, where they serve the world's highest ice-cream (served in a building). There was two options: either we would go to Shanghai World Financial Centre (SWFC, observation deck at ~450 meters) or Jin Mao tower (observation deck at ~340 meters). The latter was cheaper and had better view to the most important part for us: the Huangpu River and Pearl Tower. SWFC was behind the Jin Mao tower and although SWFC being a lot higher, Jin Mao would have blocked the view essentially. So there we were in the Jin Mao observation deck looking at the Shanghai lights at 19.00 (it was pretty dark already then, or at least very dusky). How big a city can be? You could just crop an area off from a part of Shanghai in your mind and think that "oh well, there went Helsinki".

After landing safely back to the ground we went to some restaurant for the last supper in Beijing and retreated to the warm bosom of our hostel beds.

P.S. Happy birthday to Miia Sahlman!