Yesterday afternoon I went to one of the "world-famous" afternoon-activity in which I have to participate every day after school. But this time i had the feeling that it might actually be an really interresting and usefull activity - we were supposed to go the "Yu Garden". The "Yu Garden" is one of the last traditional chinese places in Shanghai in the sense of what you expect to be typical Chinese. So I will just give you a second to think about how a real traditional chinese place would look like...and yeah ist exeactly the same as you thought of it. The only problem is that everything is newly build and excpet the temple there is nothing actually "old".
When I first entered the "Yu Garden" compound you are suprise to se such building in such a modern city. But as you walk along those buildings you take notice of something else...call it a overwhelming huge TV-screen, one of thousand jewellers, either very professional and expensive or cheap and in the "backyard-selling" style, or just literally thousands of people. As I entered the acutual compund (yeah, it is a compound in a compound) the people are getting more and more and with that the jewellers, the people who want to sell "real" Rolex to you and of course the small shops where you can buy chopsticks, chinese paintings, fans etc. But the most depressing thing was the fact that they had Starbucks, KFC and Haagen Dasz at the place. As you can imagine I felt like I am really in tradiotional China. When we went to the tea-house that is located in the middle of the compund we had to go over an "zick-zack"-bridge. In China they believe, going over this bridge will bring good luck to yourself. But when I went over that bridge I noticed something that let me laugh for a long time...to make this place more "mystic" (the teahouse is an a very small lake) they had steam coming out of some pipes. It was soooo hilarious!
Our task was to buy something as a present for home. I got to admit, the Yu Garden is a real good place to buy something tradtional chinese but they shops are often try to sell them to westerners for an unreasonible amount of money so its good to have some chinese people with you or to speak chinese. Bargain is a must! And it is soo funny to do so:-)
At the end of our activity the "Yu Garden" was actual something really usefull to me. First of all I learned never to come back to the "Yu Garden" on a friday afternoon (my suggestion: winter-time, in the morning till early lunchtime) and second that chinese people know how to make profit out of everything even if it is not slightly related to the actual relevance of the place. And third is nearly the same as second: that in Shanghai the tradtional and the modern are clahing together like nowhere else. When I looked at the teahouse the first time I saw the old building AND the skyline of Pupong. This kind of a clash is fascinating and frustrating to some extend.
It is a real shame that we did not had the time to visit the actual temple because there are really old, tradtional buildings, not some fakes. When I visited the temple with my family Christmas 2007 it was so peacefull and nice in the temple. But I will definetly try to come there a second time in the morning or late evening. I do actually have nine mor month to do so!;-)
By the way I now know more about my new hostfamily...I live with a mum, a dad, a younger sister and a grandmother together and I giong to move there on Wednesday! Hope I am going to be lucky with this one!
I hope you are as tensed as I am about my new family;-)
Have a good one
L.
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