May 15 (Day 8)

Today was a travel day so we flew from Xi’an to the much anticipated city of Shanghai. The flight was good and we meet our new tour guide, Christy. No Super Girls were on this flight so no throngs of screaming teenagers. Christy was nice enough. She was definitely an upgrade over Lily, but I could tell she lacked the infectious enthusiasm and personality of Sarah. In fact, she seemed as lost as us initially. Our first stop in Shanghai was to visit the Oriental Pearl T.V. tower. It was a distinctive building that did resemble three pearls on a string. The largest pearl was on the bottom, a medium pearl above it, and the smallest pearl at the top. It was one of the tallest buildings in Shanghai so it was a great place to go and get a bird’s eye view of the city. Unfortunately, for us, we were turned away because the African foreign prime minister was touring with the Chinese foreign minister. Big deal. We flew on a plane with a Chinese idol and we want to see the city! Needless to say, the prime minister won out and we rescheduled our visit for another day.

We toured the city by bus on our way to the hotel. Much like Beijing, skyscrapers were everywhere. I was very impressed, but I had to admit that the city would look a lot nicer if the views of laundry hanging from the balconies didn’t blight all of the residential skyscrapers. It was nothing to see underwear, socks, etc. blowing in the breeze as you rode down the freeway. With so many people and so little space, there were probably more residential high rises than commercial so we’re talking about a lot of bloomers hanging on the balcony. It really detracts from the visual appearance of the city, but I probably shouldn’t complain since I consider myself to be an environmental advocate . By drying their laundry naturally, the Chinese are conserving energy. Astonishingly, per person, the U.S. uses on average twice the energy of China and we have a population of roughly 300 million compared to China’s 1.3 billion. Drying their laundry outside doesn’t get them totally off the global responsibility hook, however. China produces much of its electricity from coal powered plants so the air is very polluted. Shanghai experienced, on average, less than 10 clear days a year. With such a large population, China has the opportunity to significantly reduce environmental pollution and reduce global warming. Therefore, the government is identifying a cleaner energy source to be used in the future. Without China chipping in on the global warming front, our efforts as a country are limited because we lack the impact that China has on the global environment.