Jan 21

We went to a Shanghai Museum today that was actually really nice and had lots to see like seals, old coins, porcelain, furniture, jade, etc.
We also were given the perfect amount of time to look through it all. Then, we went to Sun Yat Sen's house, which has been preserved as a historical site (I don't know if that's the correct spelling of his name at all). We also went to a place of the first Communist meetings. Paul got locked outside when he went out for a smoke break. Then we had some free time, and we were able to find H&M!!! Pathetic, I know. But we had been searching for it for a while, and it eventually turned into something more than a store - it turned into a mission. So I was hapied to complete our mission than to actually buy anything from the store. The prices were pretty much the same as in America, if not a bit more expensive.

Then, we went to dinner at a place that wasn't 很好吃 (tasty, good, delicious, etc.). Afterwards, I bought a dessert from another store. It looked like a biscuit with vanilla icing on the inside, so I was excited. However, I later learned it was just a ton of butter. Needless to say, that was not consumed. Goodbye 5 kuai.

After dinner, we went to see a Shanghai acrobatics show.
Andy and I spent most of our pre-show time jamming out to old school Blink 182 on his iPod and getting lots of stares. Although I liked the Shanghai acrobatics show, I think the Beijing one was better. However, the Shanghai one had some amazing highlights. Here are a few:

- women who would spin plates balances on these long sticks, almost so that they looked like the women were holding bouquest of flowers. Really, the long sticks were like the stems and the way the spinning plates reflected in the light, they looked like flowers. They could bend over backwards, lift onto each other's shoulders, all while constantly twitching their wrists to keep the bouquet of plates moving and thus keep the plates balanced and spinning. It looked surreal, like it was impossible that all the plates were really balancing. However, in the end, they let all of the plates fall off the sticks, to prove they had been balancing them the whole time. It was spectacular.

- there were these two young girls who were a rollerskating duo. They skated in circles on this little platform and use a red velvet rope to connect around eachother's necks or waists so that the one girl could hoist the other girl up and spin her around, without using either of their hands. At one point, one girl was skating in quick circles with the velvet rope around her neck, which was connected to the other girl's neck, who was spinning around without her skates on the ground, supported entirely by the momentum of the other girl skating. It was so insane. I hope my explanation did at least some justice to the scene.

- a unicyclist who was on a unicycle about 7 feet high, who would balance herself by pedaling back and forth with only one foot, while using the other foot to balance bowls on. Then, she would flick the bowls from her foot, and catch them on her head, all while on a unicycle. She only messed up once. Sometimes, she would flick as much as 4 stacked bowls from her foot to her head, and they would all land back in a pile on her head. It was really neat.

- the finale was the scariest part. It involved a metal spherical cage, and motorcyclists would drive around it, doing spins and jumps in between one another. The cage was a tight fit for even one motorcyclist, especially since it's shape meant he was often upside down or riding sideways, parallel to the ground. They kept adding motorcyclists into the cage, until at one point FIVE were in the cage at once! All of them flying and riding at speeds that made them look like lines of blurred colors rather than people. On the bus ride home, Chen told us he'd seen up to 7 in the cage at one time, but a fatal accident a little while back, made them scale back the amount of riders to decrease the danger of the act.

Some not cool acts:

- guys that juggled hats (Andy and I determined that there is a direct relation between entertainment of juggling act and the amount of bodily harm the juggled object can cause to the juggler). Thus, hats, not so entertaining. Fire swords might have been better...

- more bicycling girls (these ones only fit 10 girls on a bike though. Beijing spoiled us)

- a magician (everyone I've asked apparently fell asleep during this part)

- hoop divers (the hoop fell)