Shanghai, China

We took our first trip outside of Korea over the Chuseok Holidays (Korean Thanksgiving). We originally wanted to go to Beijing, China but could not get airline tickets (not even in June... 4 months prior to our trip). We were able to get tickets to Shanghai and decided to make a week of it there. The flight over was on China Eastern airlines and we stayed at the Holiday Inn, downtown Shanghai. Shanghai is a fascinating city. It was interesting to see the mix between the old and the new that has come about with the economic changes in China. There seemed to be a McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken on every corner, not to mention lots of Starbucks coffee shops. We spent 4 of our 5 days in Shanghai and took a one day trip outside of Shanghai to Suzhou to see some Chinese gardens, a silk factory, and a water village on Thursday.

We thought it was crowded here in Korea until this last week. We've never seen so many people. The traffic was a lot worse than in Korea as well. We went everywhere in taxis and nobody seems to follow the traffic laws. The honking was incessant! If someone wanted to play word association and said China, I would say "HONK"! There are also a ton of scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, and city buses thrown into the mix.

It was very interesting learning about the Chinese culture. We were quite the spectacle ourselves with our four children. Chinese families can only have one child without being fined by the government. Their reaction was pure astonishment. They would look at me, count the kids, grin, give me a big thumbs up and say lucky Mother. Katie Ann and Lauren were a bigger hit in China than Korea. People asked to take pictures with them, stared and sometimes reached out to touch them. We were initially surprised by this reaction but started noticing that there were almost no other tourists that consisted of families with small children. Most "Westerners" that we saw were either young adults or retirement age.