Shanghai

Well, now that that's out of my system, it's time to give Shanghai the credit it deserves with a proper entry.

It took me a full day to get used to Shanghai. The energy of the city is amazing - it's hustle and bustle everywhere and at all hours. It has double the amount of skyscrapers as New York City. The high-speed Maglev train zooms to the city at 430 km/h. Red traffic lights can mean Green. People are extremely friendly. The air didn't bother me so much on the second day - I guess it's kind of like when you go into a smokey bar and notice it at the beginning, but by the end of the night you're having so much fun that you seem to forget about the smoke. Plus, there are several pedestrian-only areas of Shanghai with better air quality.

My tour has changed twice. We're not going to Lhasa, Tibet due to protests surrounding the Olympic torch, and we're not going to Chengdu due to the earthquakes. My itinerary now consists of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuzhen, Guilin, Yangshou, Kunming, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge, Zhongdian (Shangri-La), Xi'an, Louyang, and Beijing.

The reason that I chose GAP Adventures, is that they focus on sustainable tourism and giving tourists a more local experience. (They provide a "Culture Shock" rating on each tour so you have some idea what you're getting yourself into.) On my Peru tour, we did a home-stay, camped, had an occasional cold shower, and avoided tourist eating establishments. All guides were Peruvian and had a strong pride about their heritage; my guide was doing his dissertation on "As more countries want an increasingly Western lifestyle, how do they achieve that while still maintaining their ethnic culture and tradition." So as far as China is concerned, this tour is less focused on "Seeing the Great Wall, Pandas, Terra Cotta Army" and has more emphasis on experiencing what it's like to live here and learning the history and culture. (But... we're seeing all those things, too!)