One Girl, Two Coasts: Day Fourteen: Crazy Tomatoes & the China Pavilion

Day Fourteen

Happy 4th of July from Shanghai! No fireworks for us today...today was my fathers last day in China...he had to go back to work, so us siblings would be staying behind and flying home on our own. After a homemade breakfast and lunch (my aunt made amazing dumplings), we went into the city to go to a bookstore there. My dad's a huge reader and wanted to bring back a ton of material for home. The bookstore was huge; it had 7 floors and utterly immense.

When I was going to the second floor, a Wall Street English worker (it's an English tutoring company) shoved a pamphlet in my hand and when I refused to take it, he told me I needed to learn English if I wanted to leave the country...LOL. Puh-lease. I obviously explained that English was my first language cause I was a born and raised American, which he was very surprised by. We talked for a bit about Shanghai and my trip here before I left to go roam and explore.

We stayed there for two hours, during which I bought a copy of George Orwell's 1984 for less than four bucks, and my dad bought a bunch of books. I ran into the Wall Street English guy again and he gave me his business card. It was then that I learned that his English name was...Tomato! Kind of ridiculous, right? I immediately burst out laughing and felt really bad because he had no idea why it was funny. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose...

After the bookstore, we went to the Shanghai World Expo Center to visit the China Pavilion. It had been impossible to get into during 2010 when the Expo was actually taking place, but now you could get in for free! There were a ridiculous amount of art and culture there, and we walked around for at least a few hours until closing time. The top floor featured a gigantic virtual painting, with a name like "Along the Qing Ming River". It's an adaptation of an actual painting with that name, and it's so cool because it shows an old Chinese city that was essentially one of the most prosperous places in Asia during that time period. A really beautiful and captivating piece to look at, since it featured hundreds of moving people and objects during both daytime and nighttime.

The rest of the exhibits were also nice, and highlight many Chinese artists' work. The only downside to the pavilion was that it was absolutely freezing...they'd cranked the AC up so high I got goosebumps during the three hours we were in there...finally, we left and got back in my uncles car to drive to a restaurant nearby.

Dinner was nice and quick- we ordered the perfect amount and finished it all, then headed back out to the Expo Center to look at the night lights. There was a huge concert that night at the Mercedes-Benz Center for an Asian singer named G.E.M. (I have no idea...) so there were huge crowds there. We stayed there for awhile and then headed back home to the apartment. My brother, uncle, cousin, and I really wanted to watch the Germany/France World Cup game that night at midnight, but the boys ended up snoozing while us girls stayed up and watched the whole thing (pssh, come on boys. Weak!). After watching Germany and their perfect goalie beat France, we went off to bed.