Two Days in the City

It's been awhile since I've posted, and my last post was about Qingdao.  I am in the long process of catching up on a lot of work that has kind of built up for next week.  I have a midterm in my engineering class and two papers for my culture class.  Cannot wait until it's all over.  In the mean time, last week/weekend, I went downtown twice.  Once was for a Culture Class field trip: traditional Chinese cooking.  The other was just to do some touristy stuff.  Let's start with the field trip:

We began at the MTCM (Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine), which was decently cool.  Ancient history is not particularly interesting to me, but it was cool to see different artifacts.  I could not take pictures inside, so I have nothing to show here.

After this, we went to the cooking place, which was in the French Concession.  While one group cooked, we had a couple of hours to explore. We first went to a Chinese arts and crafts museum, which was pretty cool.  I could even take pictures:

Next, we went to the wet market, where the groups cooking fish were able to choose their fresh weaver and watch it be killed and gutted.  Sorry, no pictures of that.  Also, the wet market used to have live chickens, but does not anymore due to the recent outbreak of avian flu.  Some of the vegetables are different, and I was able to take pics.

Finally, we arrived at the cooking place and began preparing our food with the help of their chefs.  I was making garlic sword beans and kongbao chicken.  I began by mincing the garlic for hte sword beans, and then cutting an marinading the chicken.  All of the dishes were made in a wok, and all of the dishes, according to our culture teacher, used much more oil than would be used in a Chinese home.  Because of this, these dishes were restaurant style.  Hmmm..sounds familiar. 

You know whats next:

Me and my fishy friend (no, not the photo-bombing one)

The completed weaver dish

Garlic Sword Beans

Kongbao Chicken

That was about it for that day.  We continued wandering around the French Concession area and went to a restaurant where we relaxed a little bit before heading back to campus.

The next day downtown: Our plans were to go to the Propaganda Poster Art Center, have lunch in Xintiandi, go to the Urban Planning Museum, and then go to the Fake Market.  Surprisingly, we actually accomplished almost all of this.  Instead of Xintiandi, which is an upscale area with Western style restaurants, we had lunch in a food court near People's Square, which was disappointing, but I won't reminisce too much there.

The Propaganda Poster Art Center was really cool.  Although I am not a big fan of ancient history, more modern history fascinates me, and this Museum was a kind of hybrid between art exhibit and historical museum.  Located in the basement of a random apartment building near the French Concession, it was nearly impossible to find, but I am glad we did.  They do not allow photography, but they do have a website, and I also have a few souvenir posters and some postcards.  Not originals, not cheap, compared with everything else here, but these are really cool souvenirs.  Website: http://www.shanghaipropagandaart.com/

After lunch near People's Square, we went to the Urban Planning Museum, which is actually located inside People's Square.  It was a really cool Museum.  Between this museum and the Propaganda Poster Art Center, I received a well rounded history lesson about the last century + in China.   Pretty cool to see how historical, political, and world events shaped and molded Shanghai and the rest of the country.  

The Urban Planning Museum has a replica of the entire city located inside of one room.  It is really quite impressive, and I took pictures:

Back to studying, but it was nice taking a break and re-living two awesome days.