Coming To An End

Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai

Our final two days were bittersweet.  The majority of us were ready to go home, but at the same time disappointed to leave behind all that we had been able to learn.

Thursday was a day to ourselves.  Myself and few classmates decided to visit the Yuyuan Garden, an area just past the Bund consisting of much more traditional Chinese architecture and a plethora of stores for shoppers to choose from.  It was a very impressive area, a mixture of the classic Chinese buildings we often saw Beijing and the fast paced and aggressive nature of the Shanghai economy.

Friday during the day we visited the Oriental Outlook Weekly Magazine.  Dr. Wu’s old friend is currently the editor-in-chief and provided us the opportunity to sit down with the staff and have a very open conversation about journalism and both cultures in general.  Megan Thomas will be providing us with a more in-depth look into our visit there as soon as possible.

Perhaps the best part of the week was the final two dinners.  The second week in Shanghai we were given much more freedom to break off into small groups and explore China first-hand.  While it makes tasks much more manageable it was nice to sit down together catch up as a group and realize just how much we had all enjoyed each others’ company in just two weeks time.

The meal on Thursday was with a couple of former students that Dr. Wu had at Arizona State who had been living in Shanghai for a number of months and had become fluent in Mandarin Chinese.  We ate at a vegetarian restaurant, which I think was actually a pleasant surprise to many of us, especially myself.  I would have never imagined eating purely vegetarian for any meal… ever.  However, after spending two weeks eating cuisine I was almost entirely unfamiliar with it had almost become a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.  You just simply try it and you either like it or you don’t.

The second night we all gathered to eat at a restaurant near the magazine’s office in a new part of Shanghai, where we experienced our last traditional Chinese meal.  It was very light-hearted and full of laughter as we all reminisced over our experiences over the last two weeks, experiences that many will never be given the opportunity to enjoy.

Both evenings ending with an exploration of the Shanghai nightlife and an early bedtime as each morning game with an early wake up call.  As we gathered on the bus early Saturday morning you could see the bittersweet feelings on everyone’s faces with the anticipation of home, but the disappoint of leaving behind a place that many of us had grown to truly enjoy and respect in simply two weeks time.