Day 20

Because I still had some money to spend from the stipend we were given, and because it was our last day in China, I woke up earlier and decided to make the most of the day.  What else would I possibly do?  At breakfast I talked with Amanda and Max for a bit before we were joined by Mike, Josh and Brandyn.  Josh, Mike, Max and I decided to go to a shop that had good touristy things, in a mall that had a floor which Josh had been to, dedicated entirely to pearls and jewelry.  It took a while longer than we expected for it to open, so we loitered outside for a bit just looking around.  There was a man doing what looked like a very feminine dance (he was mid-50's or older perhaps) and teaching some other women.  I took a picture which pretty well encapsulates the atmosphere of the thing.  It was certainly interesting.  Things were a little pricey inside, but I did manage to find the tea I had been looking for.  I had been going on the assumption that it was ginseng tea, however the tea I found, which smelled the same, was jinshen tea and may or may not be a Chinese miss-spelling (I'll defer to the tea experts on that one).  Mike of course spent the last of his money on a set of porcelain chopsticks for his mother (to be fair, it was a nice gesture, but I think he paid too much).

When we had left the store some other members of our group were there, and I stayed with them while the rest of the guys went back to the hotel.  I took Luke back up into the store and eventually Anna and Julie came up too (Nana was in the Nokia store, looking for a job probably.  He's had some pretty good success on that front in China).  We kind of looked around some more bought a couple of things then left.

Originally the thought was that we would visit the museums again, near People's Square, but we decided to take taxis to the Yu Yuan Garden area again to visit the shops and get some "bao-dz," which is a type of dumpling and is fantastic (I was talking with Amanda about it later and it turns out that YuJing, whom I worked with a couple of summers ago, makes excellent bao-dz).  Taxis typically won't let you fit five people in, so we had to split up, and ended up being separated when we got to the market.  Our taxi driver was pretty crazy, but fortunately had great reflexes.  He has this great habit of seeing a line of traffic, waiting for a bit, getting annoyed, then gunning it around the line and hurtling past (and cutting off) the cars, to make it through the turn, seemingly blind.  He made a number of left turns this way, it was pretty exciting.

Like I said, we got separated because the taxis dropped us off at different places, but it was fine because we both had Chinese speaking students in each group and knew how to get back.  Luke and I walked for a bit along the major street, kind of eyeing up shops that sold t-shirts.  We did a little bartering, but didn't purchase anything because we were convinced we could get a better deal.  Amazingly we came upon the three others that we had set out with in another part of the market area.  Tim was looking for a way to spend the money he had left, which was quite a bit.  I ended up buying a cool painting that was part of a four seasons set (spring) and got some more tea at a cheaper price (now that I knew what I was looking for, it was much easier to find the tea).  After shopping, and with less than an hour before we had to be back at the hotel and checked out, we headed to get some bao-dz.  For the price, you don't get much volume (at least not at the place we went to), but it certainly was delicious.  I think I'm going to have to find YuJing and have her teach me how to make it.

We made it back with plenty of time to spare, and then headed out as a group to take the metro to the Maglev station.  It was quite the ordeal to get all of our things through gates and turnstiles and on and off the subway through the crowds, but eventually we made it.

The Maglev was pretty cool.  I took video of almost the entire trip (all of 7 minutes); we got up to 430 km/h which is about 266 mi/h.  It was by far the fastest I've traveled on land.  At the beginning there was some talk about how it worked, and right before I was about to explain it to those interested, at the behest of Prof. VanDrunen, Mike spoke up and said that he thought perhaps the professor had meant him rather than me (I had talked with VanDrunen earlier about it, so I knew that was not the case).  He is an electrical engineering student and I'm chemical, but there is nothing in the electrical curriculum outside of the common first two years that would prepare him better than me to answer it.  I was a little miffed, but chose to let him take care of the explanation anyway.  He did a fine job in any case.

When we got to the airport it was pretty easy getting through security and having our things checked.  I think everyone was under the weight limit, or at least close.  I had my first bit of Western food in a while: a BBQ bacon cheeseburger from Burger King (the first Burger King I had seen in China).  It was good, and had a distinctly Chinese flavor to it too).  Our flight boarded and we all made it on without a hitch.

A little bit into the flight I decided to check the map to see where we would be flying over, but found that my whole console (audio, video, lights, sound) was broken.  I was able to be moved though to a different seat with a working one (an aisle seat, so definitely a huge bonus there).  The steward on my side who helped me was an African man (American, Chinese? Not sure) with a great set of braids that almost looked like they could be dreadlocks.  He looked pretty awesome, and was very helpful (later he asked me where our group was from, because we were all so polite, he said; way to be Calvin I guess).  One bad thing that happened during the flight was that a lady in the front of the plane became sick (no details of course) so they asked for any medical personnel who were on board.  Mrs. Jen eventually was brought to the front and Prof. Jen came back later on behalf of Mrs. Jen, asking for prayers for the lady.  After a short time, they announced that we would be landing in Anchorage so the woman could get medical attention!  This was an interesting turn.  Anchorage turned out to be beautiful; the airport surroundings were at least.  The mountains were glowing reddish with the dawn when we touched down.  Now I can say that I've been to Alaska, at least for a very brief period of time.

On the approach to Anchorage I started talking with the man next to me.  He was from Nanjing, traveling to Chicago to work for three months.  His name was Xia XingSuo (English name: Major, which I thought was awesome, and kind of hard to figure out) and he works as a computer engineer for Motorola.  He primarily writes applications for the Android operating system (by Google) that Motorola uses now instead of its own system.  He went to school at the University of Nanjing technical/telecommunications school (it's different from Nanjing University), worked for a year at a smaller firm and has been at Motorola for 5 years.  I really enjoyed talking with him about pretty much anything.  I asked him what he thought should happen with Taiwan; he said that it would be better for Taiwan economically to join back with China, but didn't think that it would happen any time soon.  As a computer engineer, he said that in addition to the three phones he was carrying with him, he has at least 10 that he uses at his work for coding and debugging purposes.  Pretty crazy stuff.  He was very nice, and we exchanged e-mail addresses, so that the next time I'm in Nanjing, I can meet up with him.  I'd love to, but I'm not sure how soon it will be, if ever, that I return.

When we finally arrived in Chicago we learned that our plane had been held for us until 8pm.  We arrived at around 6:45pm, and whisked quickly through customs, got our bags rechecked then speedily got onto the plane.  The flight from Chicago was only 30min long, which was great because we all just wanted to not be on a plane anymore.  It went without a hitch, and they even managed to get all of our bags on the same plane as we were on, so we only had to wait a bit to get them.

We arrived in Grand Rapids to the smiling faces of friends and family.  It was great to be home.  The family rounded up the bags, I got my things from Joe, who had generously let me put my new coat and old shoes in his duffle, I said some goodbyes and we were gone.

When we arrived home I wasn't very tired, so I shared the things I had bought with the family, unpacked slightly, and left most of the dirty things (read: all of my clothes) for tomorrow.  Today was pretty much a 30-hour day, split up by a bit of sleep on the plane.

Good afternoon from Shanghai and goodnight from Hudsonville, a wonderfully exotic locale.