09.06.08 City tour and Shanghai City Museum

The cream of the crop from SC and me in the Shanghai City Museum. All business men and women from SC. I met most of them and told them that if they needed an intern I could be it. I can be seen right behind the Chinese lady with the white dress. Dr. Silver is in the black t-shirt and jeans, and Martha is the tallest woman in the group, all the way to the left.






Above: The Building with the gap is currently the world's largest building.


It is the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC). Dubai already has a building starting construction that will be taller. But, do you see the building that is taller than the SWFC in the above picture? That building will be ready by 2014 and will be taller than the one in Dubai. Pretty cool right?





World Expo area




China's building ( Red Building)



Performance Center (Blue lit up up building)



The city is divided by the Huang Pu River. East and West side.




Today I woke up at 7:30 after coming home at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was a fun night at the Muse 2. All you can drink for 100 RMB, which equals $13 roughly. Anyway, so I ate breakfast (Bao Zi, dumpling with vegetables), and had the dad (Nian Guo) write the address of the hotel for me.



I got to a really nice Sheraton and found Dr. Silver after looking for him for a good 20 minutes. I met a lot of people from SC there. Most, according to Dr. Silver were pretty powerful people from the state.


Anyway, so we all met downstairs in the lobby to depart for a city tour that they had planned. I am very lucky to have been invited by Dr. Silver. Thanks again Dr. Silver.



We arrived at the Shanghai city Museum. This museum is dedicated to help explain to foreigners, and locals themselves the size and growth that Shanghai has had over the current years. It does a great job of laying out the city in a model and the future site of the 2010 world expo, which will be held in Shanghai. The Shanghainese don't really think the olympics was that big of a deal. Instead, because the world expo is going to be in Shanghai in 2010, that's all they talk about. haha. In my mind the olympics is a bigger deal than the world expo, but don't tell any Shanghainese I said that.

I want to try to explain how big Shanghai is. If you put New York, LA, Miami, Detroit, and Houston all together then it might be as big as Shanghai...you might have to add O-Town in there just to make sure that it's as cool as Shanghai. haha. When we drove in from the airport, we started seeing large amounts of buildings. I then thought we were in Downtown. I quickly found out that those 50 story buildings were just apartments. We saw apartments buildings fro a good 20 minutes before we got to downtown. That's where the big boys were. Nothing really helped explain how vast this city is until I went to the Shanghai Museum. I hope the pictures help in explaining.


If you are a Civil Engineer, an Architect or a developer you have to be here. There is so much construction still going on. The heavy equipment market is booming, and most impressing of all is how quickly buildings get built. We were in the Shanghai museum and they were showing us the World Expo layout. The architectural and civil plans were amazing. Each country in the world expo will have it's own building...I shouldn't say building. I should say, each country will have it's own masterpiece. These buildings are amazing. The engineering, architecture, and hard work put into this world expo is historic. I have a feeling these buildings will be our next wonders of the world. China, UK and Nepal are my favorite buildings. I should say the American building is my favorite, but they haven't even designed it yet. yeah, that's right they have less than two years until the world expo kicks off, and they still haven't designed or started construction of some the buildings. I told the museum tour guide that China is waiting to design the best building last. He laughed and said, China's building is by far the best. I wanted to get physical but I didn't. haha. Just kidding.

We got back to the Sheraton. I thanked Dr. Silver and his wife for lunch, and for inviting me on the tour. I also got Martha's email to try to find out more about the SC dept. of commerce. Martha and Gregg work for the SC Dept. of Commerce. They were the ones that organized the tour for us. Martha just graduated this past May from Wofford University, an excellent school in SC for those who don't recognize the name. She told me her next trip will be to Dubai I thought to my self, this girl just graduated, she's in Shanghai now and will be going to Dubai. Not only that, she gets to meet some of the most powerful business people in SC. SC doesn't really interest me, but the fact that she has the opportunity to travel to the most happening cities in the world is amazing. Nonetheless, I think this is a pretty cool job. So, I got her e-mail, and said my goodbyes to everyone.


Got home for dinner. Ate a fish eye and called it a night. The fish eye was pretty hard to eat. I imagined a fish eye would have been slimey and easy to eat, but maybe because it was cooked, it was pretty difficult to eat. So far chicken feet and fish eye have been no match for me. We'll have to wait and see If i'm man enough to eat deer penis. haha. It's been done before. That's all I have to say.