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Dâka-hô!
That’s how you say “Hi everybody” in Shanghainese! We had half of a free day in Shanghai, so we decided to spend our time wisely and visit the Shanghai Museum!
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There were four whole floors of artifacts in the museum, dating from 6,000 BC to 1911 AD! That’s quite the history! It’s really something to see a perfectly intact ceramic pot dated approximately 6,000 BC, believe me!
Where can I even begin? There were paintings and masks and costumes and sculptures galore! There was an exhibit dedicated entirely to the history of jade sculpting, from the tiniest fetishes to the most gigantic statues!
There was also an exhibit dedicated to the coinage of China over the years. Did you know that Chinese currency wasn’t originally round like our coins today? Way back in the mists of time, they were sickle-shaped and were strapped to belts! It wasn’t until around 221 BC that they became more rounded and easier to put in a pocket. Oh! They had a very rare coin too, minted at the height of the rule of Genghis Khan! That reminds me. The coins of the Qing dynasty featured Mongol script alongside Chinese characters. Isn’t it ironic that, after thousands of years of fighting northern invaders, that the last years of Chinese imperial rule ended under a northern emperor?
We had ample time to peruse the remaining exhibits. The calligraphy exhibit was interactive! The room would be dark until you approached the glass. Then motion detectors would turn on the lights! I had no idea that there was a cursive form of Hanzi, just like English! How neat is that?
Oh, and another thing I didn’t realize was how many different Buddhas there are that look just like Mr. Gautama, or Sakyamuni! In fact, there weren’t that many buddhas here with those names at all!
We didn’t have to hurry too much back to the hotel, but we did anyway. We had our final Chinese lunch of sweet lotus root, eggplant, noodles and rice. It was so much more than we were prepared to eat! We met with Ellen just in time to head to the airport. The drive back was a lot shorter than I remembered. In fact, it really was shorter in every way. We had arrived at Hongqiao Airport when we were supposed to be at Pudong, on the other side of Shanghai!
By some wild turn of events and despite heavy traffic, we blazed across Shanghai and arrived at Pudong with half an hour to spare! We checked our bags in a hurry, hired a cart to speed us across the airport, and we arrived as the last passengers were stepping onto the plane. It was a good thing we did too, because the plane took off no less than three hours later. Wait, did I say that right? Three hours? Yup, due to bad weather and air congestion, we sat on the plane for three hours. That, of course, meant missing our connection in Beijing. That meant, furthermore, that we’d have to stay another night… in the Golden Phoenix Hotel. More on that tomorrow.
Sticky dreams…
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