Last full day in shanghai (Monday)

This was an overcast day, so dad and I were thankful that we had spent the day before outside and this day would be mostly spent indoors. For days we had wanted to see the chinese propaganda museum and decided it was to be first on the list this day.

The lovely ladies in purple, the workers at ying ying, fed us dumplings, noodles and what dad thinks is a veal cutlet for breakfast. This may sound heavy and odd for breakfast food, because it is, but we were full nonetheless and can't complain of illness yet!

Dad thought it was time to try our luck at catching a cab. Turns out they're easy enough to hail but hell to direct. You have to have the street address in Chinese, which sounds easier then it is, the name of the destination is NEVER enough ( as we would later learn when trying to go to a metro station). Anyway, we did get to the correct street corner but this museum was just as difficult to find as the lonely planet had warned us. It is in the basement of an apartment building (or something) and luckily some frenchman was showing his parents the propaganda also and had pulled in on a motorbike to see the museum just as we were looking and kindly showed us down the convoluted halls and stairs to our destination.

The museum was very interesting, showing about 50 years worth of propaganda posters made to support the communist party in the beginning then changing, with the times following Mao's leadership, to a more rightist influence. Some of the earliest poster, before Mao, were of the "shanghai girls". These pin-up posters were made with views of the Bund in the back and were used to promote certain cigarette brands and other western-type items. Once communism caught on the posters started promoting hard work on farms and in factories to support troops fighting US imperialism. Even the earliest posters from the 30s-50s showed women working in science, farms and various industries, I was impressed. As time passed and the threat of the US became more apparent and rightists started to emerge in china, there was a shift in the posters towards promoting Maoist thought and stamping out opposing political theories- these were posters displaying the Chinese people in a singular green uniform and raising their little red books ( or simply as sunflowers) smiling towards Mao, the red sun. Many posters promoted racial (Asian, African and Latin American) unity and an overall push to increase ones knowledge - as "knowledge is power". Other posters backed the cuban revolution, with pictures of Che Guevara and the Cuban people fighting with fists and rifles, and more still had messages supporting the blacks in the USA as well as the people demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. All very moving.

Some posters did make me giggle, like the one saying "support the revolution, practice birth control" which had a happy woman holding some type of contraception against a background of women educating their children as well as being useful on the farm and in factories. Another poster had a rocket full of babies blasting off into space with what may have been their mothers as heavenly bodies standing in clouds above a rainbow raining sparkles down on the children.... I think it was promoting scientific knowledge?!

We weren't allowed to take pictures but dad and I bought 6 prints and 3 postcards, these were all copies of posters we saw in the gallery.

The gallery was small, only two main rooms, divided into separate areas according to the years the posters were produced. Apparently 100s of thousands of posters did not divide the various political turns the country took, (unfortunately) but hopefully the collection at the museum will remain intact, and even grow as it gains fame.

There were also black and white pictures of people viewing the posters on the street- hundreds of them (people and posters) - and dad says it's because it was a form of news. The public media was insufficient, and People never knew how the political tides would turn but they could get an update by looking at the most current posters on display in the street.

So we finally left the museum and had several locations to choose from to visit, but we landed on the Jade temple (photo associated with this blog). A Buddhist temple, that had become very touristy, we happened upon it during it's may day festivities. Elderly women, we suspect a dying breed, sang, danced and prayed for the numerous deities represented by huge gold statues. Smiling and laughing Buddhas of all shapes and sizes litter this temple- u rub laughing buddah's belly for good luck... I liked doing that and did it a lot!

Somethings of interest may be:
- you can tell the sex of a chinese statue by whichever foot it has forward, left for male and right foot for female
- the god of the north has a parasol he uses to fly and the tip shoots lasers( apparently!)
- the western god is angry and has a snake, he shoots lasers out his eyes to kill people
- the god of the south opposes that of the west and is also angry, he beheads people with his sword
- finally, the eastern god yields the classic Chinese guitar-like instrument, the name of which escapes me, and as far as I can remember doesn't shoot lasers or kills people?!
- jade is used, especially during the new year, to cleanse oneself and one house of evil spirits and brings good fortune. Bracelets of jade are supposed to stabilize cardiovascular health and jewelry, in general, brings good fortune.

You can take as many pictures as you like of anywhere and anything in the temple except the jade buddah itself... I naturally took my iPhones camera out immediately. I don't know if it's a rule based on spiritual or preservational value but the former doesn't bother me in the slightest and the latter shouldn't matter as I have no flash on this thing! I'm just a s*** disturber without a cause I guess.

Our next stop was the shanghai museum. We caught our first "supercapacitor city bus" to get there and a little old man took a liking to us and made sure we knew what we were doing. Unlike most other situations dad and I actually had this one under a slight amount of control but the man was so pleasant and nice( didn't speak English) that dad gave him one of the little Canadian flag souvenirs he carries with him for just such an occasion.

We arrived at the shanghai museum, in the middle of People's Square, to see that it was lined with beasts of chinese cultural history- lions, eagles and pixies, which I hadn't realized originated here. Pixies are also used to chase away evil spirits.

The museum is free, but I can't be certain if that's because of the holiday or just how it is everyday, we didn't bother to ask. The museum itself is lovely, with interesting stairways and escalators that ascend on either side of the marbled trimmed lobby. There are halls of displaying Chinese clothes, seals, paintings, bronze, jade and much more in the 4 floors but we didnt have time to see them all. We breezed through the majority of the halls I mentioned above and watched a short on jade cultivation through the millennia.

Our whole day was on a timeframe because we needed to get back to the nanpu marketplace for 4pm so dad could pick-up his suits. Both suits turned out great but dad wanted the waist taken out a bit on both in case he gets fat, he joked. So both shops asked us to come back in a half hour.

I was getting chilly as the temp had dropped a bit and it seemed like it might rain. Dad and I took the advice of shao li, a nice shop girl of my age, and headed to the local supermarket to pick me up a rain jacket for our moutain climb the next day. I got what I was looking for (59 yuan- conversion rate = 9.20$ CAN) and we picked up 5 big bag of seeds and dried fruit for 6 dollars. Just ridiculously cheap, for us. The Chinese are very cleaver, or at least I haven't seen anything similar anywhere else I've travelled, but everything here is engineered to be useful and pretty. They have a 2 story supermarket with a flat, magnetic escalator that attracts the wheels of ur cart and doesn't let go until u reach the top/bottom, very useful. Though there is a wide variety of foods to choose from, most are unrecognizable and have no English titles which made us stick to what we know- dried kiwi, grapes, bananas and seeds- adequate climbing sustenance.

We ended our day earlier, as we had to catch a bus to huangshan mnt for 7am the next morning, but not before finding some dinner. We were tired, as we hadn't eaten since breakfast and had trouble agreeing/finding a reasonable place to eat and somehow walked into a place without a single word of English on the menu or spoken by the staff. Fortunately, as I've mentioned before, everyone is overly kind and an old man, that spoke some English helped us communicate with the very accommodating staff. We had the best meal here ( and hope to return tonight, may 5th, though we our bus is just entering shanghai now, at 8 and not expected to get to Peoples Square until 9, then we have to catch the metro...) and they even gave us free dumplings, I guess cause they saw me motioning towards them before I landed on what I ended up ordering.

Since we knew we would be having and early breakfast followed by a 6 hour bus ride, we decided to pick up some fresh banana, pineapple and mango from a vendor by our hostel to satisfy my fruit craving and some dairy products from the local supermarket for dad. He asked for chocolate milk, in Chinese, as it was one of the few phrases he learned in mandarin class, and once the workers realized what he was asking for they alllll erupted into a chant about it and a frenzy to find it... I grabbed a beer. (suntory beer comes in bottles of 660ml and cost 3 yuan- conversion rate = 0.47$ CAN hahahha)

We went back to our hostel, split the beer and passed out.

Just a side note- we are riding the bus, at night, back into shanghai along the highway and all the the offices and restaurants have dazzling light displays strategically emphasizing their amazing architecture.