We spent the last six days of the program in Shanghai, and as the title says it is my favorite city that we visited in China. It’s my favorite because of how new and international the city is. There are a lot of foreigners from all over the world in Shanghai and it was awesome getting a chance to meet some of these people. While in Shanghai we got to do a lot of cool stuff like visit the Shanghai World Financial Center (which offered an amazing view of the city), go to the Bund, and much more. I also had the top two best bowls of noodles I ever ate while in Shanghai which were absolutely delicious. It was an awesome end to an amazing experience. I will never forget the time I spent in China while participating in this program, and I will always cherish the memories and friends that I made.

While in Chongqing, we visited the Chongqing zoo. The first thing that we saw coming in was the pandas, of course. They had a red panda before the normal pandas and the exhibit sign called it a “lesser panda” which I thought was pretty funny. It was really cool to see pandas finally, but they really don’t do much. They only do two things: sleep and eat, and when they eat they eat a lot. The panda in the picture above was chomping down on a bunch of bamboo and the bamboo that he was going to eat next was on his belly. While they don’t really do anything, pandas are still pretty cool. While we were there we also got to see white tigers, hippos, rhinos, zebras, a giraffe, monkeys, and more. I think that the monkeys were my favorite exhibit that we went to because they were so funny. At the one exhibit there were two monkeys just running around and play fighting right in front of us which was really cool. At another one there was a monkey that had really long arms and he was just swinging around everywhere really fast. It was pretty incredible to watch. I was really glad that we were able to go to the zoo and see all of these cool animals.

While in Huangshan we got to visit the Huashan Mystery Caves. They’re called this because no one knows why or how they were built. China is a much older country than America and has a long and rich history with no lack of knowledge about their early history, but there is no record or reference of these caves in any of the ancient texts. There are 36 caves that have been discovered so far and they have existed for around 1,700 years. They were man made by hand chiseling the stone and you realize how incredible this is once you’re inside the cave as it is pretty spacious. I really liked how the cave was lit up with different colored lights and even had lights in some of the pools of water that would change color. It was really interesting to see how precisely chiseled the stone was which goes to show how skilled these people were that made it. Maybe one day we will figure out the purpose of these caves and how they were constructed, but until then it will have to remain a mystery.

The third city that we went to was Xi’an. A long time ago it used to be the capital of China and one of the emperors ruling during that time, Qin Shi Huang, decided that he needed to make a bunch of Terracotta Warriors to protect his tomb when he died. These guys were buried underground and were discovered in 1974 by local farmers. They have been excavating this site since, and still have a lot of warriors to unearth even after 42 years. I was impressed by how many warriors were there. Each one of them that had a head had its own unique face, which is pretty incredible considering how many there are. There were three pits, each one was smaller than the last and had different kinds of warriors in them. The final one we visited had the generals and horses in it which was pretty cool. Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum has yet to be uncovered because it is feared that the artifacts inside would be ruined if the archaeologists messed up and there is a lot of mercury in there as well which is hazardous. It was a really awesome experience seeing all those warriors, learning about them, and knowing that there are still a lot more that have yet to be uncovered.

On the first day in China we got a chance to see a lot of amazing things. We started off by going to the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The building was essentially a huge metal dome that was surrounded by water. Once we went inside I really got a better understanding of how big this place was. It reminded me of how big Terminal 3 was at Beijing Capital International Airport. After this we went to Tienanmen Square. Next we went to Mao Zedong’s memorial which was packed with people. Some even bought flowers and left them at a statue of him and paid respect in the first room. In the next room I got to see his preserved body which was awesome but also kinda weird. Then we went to  the Forbidden City where we walked through only part of it but it still took us a long time to go through. Once we walked through we went to an overlook and really got to see how incredibly huge this place and Beijing is. I’ve never really been to a big city before coming here so it was very different than what I’m used to. After this we went to snack street where I got to see a lot of different kinds of food. There were spiders, scorpions (which some were even still alive), and a lot of other crazy foods. We ended the day by seeing an acrobat show where they had a bunch of motorcycles riding around in a metal sphere cage. The first day in China was amazing.