Hot Town, Summer in the City

Well, the weather finally broke this evening as my body was quietly, but forcefully making its protest of this indoor AC/outdoor solar furnace routine I've been putting it through. Around 2pm the temperature topped out at 106 degrees and a storm finally broke open. Meanwhile, my scratchy throat from yesterday that had evolved into hazy sinus congestion was throbbing in my ears and face saying, "Take a nap! Take a nap!" Unfortunately I was in a futuristic media lab, and naps were not on the agenda (until later).

Let me back up a couple of days. We've been spending a lot of time visiting in the indoor sights of Shanghai due to this dangerously hot weather. It's a bummer, but there's nothing we can do about it. In the morning yesterday we visited the Shanghai Urban Planning Center. It was a very interesting museum about Shanghai's development historically, presently, and for the future. It was put together for the Shanghai Expo in 2010 I believe. The most interesting part of the museum was a model of most of the downtown of Shanghai.

Our hotel is closer to the far end of the room.

Arial view of the model. The part that sticks out with the tall buildings is the economic development zone.

After lunch in a restaurant in an underground mall, we went to the Shanghai Museum. The building itself is unique: it is shaped like a bronze bowl with handles. You see this kinds of bowls as artifacts in museums and also replica bowls in the lobbies of many buildings. I think they symbol prosperity. Anyway, the most interesting exhibit for me was the ancient clothing of the minority cultures across China. We had a long time at the museum, so many of us spent a lot of time roaming the gift shop. We all got a huge kick out of this book of photographs of terrible Chinese-to-English translations. If you ever want to laugh, go look it up on Amazon and look at some of the pages. It's called, Chinglish.

Yesterday evening we had our second river cruise of the trip. Unfortunately the Pudong Economic Development Zone, with all its iconic buildings, was not lit up for us last night. We think it is because of this crazy heat here; they don't want to use more energy while so many air conditioners are running at full blast across the city. It was disappointing not to see all the lights, but I guess I can't argue against the environmentally friendly choice.

Here is some of the gang waiting to board the boat.

Our ride for the evening

The economic development zone at sunset

From the boat--usually there are many more lights

The Bund all lit up

I think that spotlight was coming from a party boat!

A few of us got our fair share of neon lights because we decided to walk back from the Bund to our hotel via Nanjing Road. A few blocks of Nanjing Road are closed to car traffic, and that area is compared to Time's Square. It was certainly loud enough and bright enough!

Shanghai's Time Square

Today we visited the Children's Palace of the China Welfare Institute. The Children's Palace is the grand name for an after school and summer program center. We visited students in chorus class, art class, dance class, English class, and a computer class. The dancing in particular was cute overload. I could have hung out there all day!

Art class at the Children's Palace

You just can't get much cuter than this.

In the afternoon, during the height of my body's rebellion against this crazy weather, we visited the Shanghai Media Image Art center, AKA, the Super Future. The president, Dr. Sherwood Hu, greeted us, and was movie star smooth and cool. He showed us all around his workspace, which he said functioned as an office, lab, and exhibition hall. Dr. Hu has made films for Francis Ford Coppola, and also designed a 540 degree domed immersion-theater experience during the Shanghai Expo. It was really interesting to hear him talk about the problem-solving involved with filming in 540 degrees and then projecting into a dome. He was a very positive and inspiring speaker, but I couldn't help but thinking about the "parlors" in Farenheit 451. Dr. Hu spoke about creating these multimedia film experiences, and I had to balance the coolness of that with watching a young boy throw his plastic water bottle over the side of the boat and into the river last night with complete disregard for environmental impacts. China, and by default, the rest of the world, faces huge environmental challenges with all this development. My thought as Dr. Hu spoke about this new kind of theater was a a fear that if people can just manufacture any environment with this film technology, then does it mean people will have even less regard for the real natural environment?

Into the media future with Dr. Hu.

Anyway, during all this, and maybe because of the pressure build up before the storm, my face felt like it was going to explode. When the option of getting dropped off at the hotel or going back to an art district we visited a few days ago came up, I chose to go take a nap. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling many, many times better.

Tomorrow two of us are paired up with one student for the day. I'm hoping we get to go up to the top of one of the huge buildings! It should be a fun day.