China Day 7

 This was basically our last day to do anything.  We had the option of going on an additional excursion to a small town nearby, but we opted not to so we could have our own adventure.

We started off walking to the subway and hopping on a train to get to the Shanghai Zoo.  This was mostly because when I had told my class that I was going to China, the only thing they asked was for me to take a picture of a panda.  We didn't see any pandas wandering the streets of Beijing or Shanghai so we went to them.  This zoo was huge!  It was actually more of a very large park with animals but the animals were very spread out.  We saw more animals in the small portion of the zoo we visited than in other zoos we've been to.

While we were there, we also saw the lesser or red panda.  The rest of my group didn't know these guys even existed which surprised me.

After the zoo, we grabbed a taxi to go to the train station.  We rode a bullet train to a nearby city called Hang Zhou.  Earlier in the week, our tour guide told us about when Nixon first visited China.  As a gift, he gave China a couple of bison and two sequoia trees.  Michael heard about the trees and decided he could write off the whole trip if he went to see these trees as he does an Arbor Day show and figured he could include these trees in one of his songs or skits.  We knew that one of the trees had already died, but were hoping the other was still around.  The train took us just under an hour to get there and we travelled up to 304 km per hour (about 189 mph), it was pretty neat.  Once we got to Hang Zhou, we had lunch at KFC (we were starting to get tired of all the same meals), but it was not quite the same as home.  We knew the trees were planted in a local botanical garden and we finally found someone to tell us how to get there.  We took a taxi out to a very nice area by a lake.

A few of the workers gave us directions and even walked with us a bit of the way.

Michael took a lot of videos rather than photos.  He was also really excited about finding the trees.

We eventually found the right area but the two original trees had died.  There were still sequoias there to see and hug as they were the descendants of the Nixon trees.

After finding the trees, we started walking back towards town so we could take a look at the lake.

Along the way we also found a gorgeous flower garden.  I'm sure it would be even prettier if it was winter.

It was raining pretty much the whole day so we were a bit damp.  We had a bit of a trouble getting a taxi back into town as we weren't really in a populated area.  Eventually we did grab a taxi to take us back and we got back on a train to Shanghai.  This trip was a bit more interesting as one of the locals took a liking to Dani and followed her onto the train.  He sat behind us the whole time and kept trying to get her to pay attention to him.  We don't think he was all there (he was probably missing a marble or two) and eventually someone complained and the train people realized that he didn't have a ticket so they handed him off to the authorities at the next station.

After getting back to Shanghai, we decided to go see the Bund at night all lit up.  We also found an underground market (literally--it was under the ground, not secretive).  A couple of girls at the market were talking to Nick and he discovered they thought I was thirteen and with my parents, Dani and Michael.  At least I was getting a little older.

 

We took a taxi back to our hotel that night and then started packing up a bit.

Here is a video that Michael put together of our adventures in Shanghai: