Zhangjiajie, the inspiration for Avatar

While there aren't many wild places in the world that I feel the need to experience in person, when I found out that the floating Mountains of Pandora, from the movie Avatar, were actually based on real mountains, I felt compelled to visit. Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is located in Hunan province, about a two hour flight form Shanghai. Even though Avatar was largely CGI, James Cameron  went to Zhangjiajie to film them for the movie. Katy is from Vermont and loves the outdoors, and I love the movie Avatar, so it was both perfect and a once in a lifetime opportunity to get as close as possible to the fictitious alien planet of Pandora.

So if you haven't got it yet, I am a huge fan of Avatar: I saw it in theaters four times (in 2D, 3D, IMAX and IMAX 3D) and I can't wait for the sequels to come out (hopefully next year). I was a film minor in college but had never geeked-out over a movie before I completely geeked-out over Avatar. Visually and technologically I think it was the most important movie in generations, the films it has inspired still haven't been made yet, but I think time will tell what a game-changer it was. On top of that, I loved the story and the various allegories to conservationism, ecology and protecting our planet. I believe art can change politics, albeit slowly and subliminally, and I was incredibly happy that Avatar came out when it did for the awareness it has raised. Anyway, Zhangjiajie looks like Pandora because it both inspired the scenery and parts of Avatar were actually filmed there.

Zhangjiajie prefecture is over 3,000 square miles and contains over a million people. The 150 square miles of National Forest Park is abutted by the small city of Wulingyuan, which is closer to the entrance to the park. There is also Baofeng Lake and Huanglong Cave, which we also visited. While there isn't much to do or see in Wulingyan, construction is rampant and tourism is booming for the Park, Lake and Caves. Wulingyuan also has a Giant Salamander Nature Reserve but it was closed for renovations when we tried to visit; the fact that it exists at all made us happy, mostly because Giant Salamanders are becoming endangered. In addition to seeing protected Giant Salamanders on display, we also saw Giant Salamander on the menu in Wulingyuan. At least they are starting to raise awareness I guess.

A recent discovery found hominid teeth that are at least 80,000 years old, suggesting that this area might be the first part of the world that supported human life outside of Africa. Perhaps humans didn't occupy this exact park: the very landscape of Zhangjiajie makes me question what little we know about geology and physics. How did these towers of rock form? How did everything around it disappear? There are unbelievable rock bridges, towers of leaning rock, and trees growing sideways out of these 'islands' of mountain.

 

Our favorite were the monkeys that you're not supposed to feed. I had never seen monkeys in the wild but like following rules pertaining to wildlife, so we didn't feed them ourselves - instead spent at least a collective hour watching other people feed them. The monkeys are definitely smart and occasionally exhibited aggressive behavior. We watched one large adult monkey pull apart a plastic bag of nuts a man was in the act of eating from. As soon as the bag split open, half a dozen other monkeys quickly gathered up the spilled goodies and scattered. We also saw park visitors feeding the monkeys packaged goods; the monkeys quickly bit open the wrapper, unwrapped and discarded the wrapping on the forest floor and enjoyed the treats inside. One woman was taking a selfie, leaning against the railing and not paying any attention to her surroundings when an adult male monkey was walking along the top of the railing and shouldered her out of the way! She was shocked but he honestly looked indignant - I guess he expected her to move for him.

During our four days in Zhangjiajie we also enjoyed the Huanglong Caves, that were incredibly busy but breath-taking. Unlike the stalagmites and stalactites I studied in school, there were all types of geological formations I had no words to describe. The tours seemed really educational and interesting, but they were completely in Manadarin so Katy and I missed out on an educational experience. Unlike any American park I have ever heard of, this cave was lit up with different colored lights, making the large cave-system appear a little like a concert venue. Unfortunately, visiting the caves involved pushy crowds and many flights of slick stone steps. I was more than a little uncomfortable with the human jostling, but we survived and it was worth the effort. It is possible we get pushed more because we are foreigners (there were very few non-Chinese in Zhangjiajie) but it seemed like everyone was pushing each other about as much as they were pushing us.

This was the most remote place in the world I have ever visited, it was hard to get to and no one spoke English, but, if you are an adventure-seeker like Katy, or willing to go on an adventure like me, I highly recommend making the trip. From an infrastructure, language barrier and unfamiliarity point of view, I have never been anywhere like this before. Bathrooms were basic, no one spoke English, and in crowds the concept of personal space was non-existent. The important things are that we survived all the crazy bus rides and had experiences we will never forget. The world is an amazing place and we are lucky to have gotten there.

I hope you like the pictures, but they really don't do the place justice. Zhangjiajie was the most beautiful place I have ever been in the world and despite the many obstacles of traveling there, I highly recommend taking the trip if you are ever in China. More spectacular than anywhere I have been in America including Yellowstone, Colorado (winter or summer), the Pacific Northwest, and the Adirondacks of New York. Visiting Zhangjiajie is as close as I will ever get to traveling to James Cameron's planet of Pandora and I hope our pictures inspire you to get some nature wherever you might find it.

 

Returning from Pandora

When I first arrived in Shanghai, I immediately realized that in order for me to experience Vermont-style nature, I’d need to actively plan trips outside of this 20 million-person city.  I started googling around for “China nature” and pretty quickly stumbled upon this place called the “Avatar Mountains.”  It was about a 2 hour flight from Shanghai and is reportedly the original inspiration for the Hallelujah Mountains depicted in Avatar.  I found a fellow blogger (thanks Brendan’s Adventures!) who posted about his trip there and then started researching flights.  In characteristic Katy fashion, I booked the flights and hostels within 48 hours and Simon and I were set to go to the most remote place he had ever been.

This weekend, we spent four days in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan province in southern China.  We spent one night in the bustling town of Zhangjiajie, one night inside the park itself, and two nights outside the park in a small town called Wulingyuan.  Our innkeepers were incredibly welcoming and gracious hosts who went out of their way to make our stay perfect.  This was especially surprising given that only one of the three innkeepers spoke English, and the other two had to communicate with us by translating Chinese into English using their smartphones.  The menu for our favorite restaurant in Wulingyuan (we ate there 3 times in 4 days) was all in Mandarin, but thankfully there is a cool app that creates a new image with all the characters translated into English right on the image of the menu itself.

Muslim Restaurant (that's the name according to their sign) menu

Our hostel address.  We can't read it, but the taxi drivers can!

I’ll let Simon talk about the actual nature parts of the adventure.  For me, what I’m still thinking about are the cultural interactions themselves.

One thing that was immediately different upon getting to the park itself was how unusual it was for local people to see Westerners.  Kids were actively staring at us on the street and some used us as a chance to practice their English.  It wasn’t just children – even adults our age said “hello” in English as they passed by and we were happy to great them back.  “Laowai” is a Mandarin term for foreigner, and one toddler pointed at us and said “laowai,” the way a toddler in the US might point at a car and say “car.”  We were novel and unusual, and some people were pointing out in a way that made me feel different but not uncomfortable or unwelcome.  Others asked to stop and take a picture with us – unfortunately we only took two back.

When I was reading about Shanghai, I read that people might practice English with me here but that hasn’t happened in Shanghai.  Shanghai is so cosmopolitan that seeing laowais is quotidian.  In Wulingyuan, we could have been some of the first laowais they had ever seen.  There were a 3 other groups of laowais that we ran into in the park (mostly college kids on spring break), but as a proportion of all the people in the park we were definitely less than 1 in 100, maybe less than 1 in 1000.  It was strange thinking that the townspeople might be forming their opinions of an entire culture based on 5 seconds watching us on the street.  It made me feel an unexpected sense of responsibility, knowing that my actions in that moment could set their expectations for all laowais across the world.

Another reflection I’ve had on this trip is how lucky I am to be able to travel like this (4 countries in 4 weeks).  At lunch on Friday at work, I was talking to my colleagues about my upcoming trip to Zhangjiajie and none of them had ever been there.  It was a long weekend, but none of them were traveling at all.  From what I understand, travel is still a relatively new thing for Chinese people.  Only now are millennials starting to have the disposable income and desire to spend money on experiences (travel) instead of consumer goods.  I like to think I’m aware of my privilege, but in that moment at lunch when I realized that travel is a once-a-year type thing and not multiple times a month, I realized how different my life is than that of my Chinese peers.

Monkeys!  The signs very clearly said don't feed them, and we didn't.  But many other people did so they came right up close to us looking for a sugary treat.

Third, traveling to Zhangjiajie helped reset my expectations about what “comfortable” looks like and what is “enough”.  We lived a pretty rustic life over the past four nights.  We always had our own separate bathroom but in each place the shower and the toilet were one area, not separated by a shower curtain or door.  The beds were very hard, more or less a piece of plywood and a cushion an inch or two thick.  The duvets were VERY nice, but didn’t do much to soften the hard beds.  In the hostel we stayed in inside the park, the line-dried sheets were a little damp and the walls and ceiling were dotted with mold spores.  The toilets inside the park were squatting pans rather than toilets, none of them had toilet paper, and some smelled so bad I chose to hold it rather than use them.  Coming back to Shanghai last night, to an apartment I hadn’t been thrilled about for the past month, I felt like I was moving back into a palace.  It’s funny how just a few nights shifted my baseline and helped me see Shanghai and our apartment with a completely new, much more appreciative, set of eyes.  We didn’t choose Zhangjiajie for that reason, but I’m glad I had this experience earlier on so that I can better appreciate all the comforts that I do have in Shanghai rather than focus on the things that I don’t have compared to the US.

Finally, for all of the differences I noticed between what I’m used to and what is “normal” in Zhangjiajie, some things are universal.  One of those things is bunny ears.  One of the girls who was fascinated by our appearance first took pictures of us from across the bus aisle.  Then her grandfather offered to take her picture with us and we squeezed her in between us.  When he took the picture, Simon made bunny ears on her head without her noticing.  Simon showed her the picture and she was playfully mad at him about it.  (I was worried that bunny ears would be some kind of taboo thing in China meaning something awful and completely unintentional but thankfully it wasn’t!)  Another universal thing: bumper cars.  Our last night, we went walking through the city of Zhangjiajie and happened upon a few carnival rides inside a park.  We paid $4.50 for both of us to ride in the bumper cars and ended up playing with 5 other cars full of Zhangjiajie youth.  We couldn’t speak to them, but ramming each other with bumper cars and laughing our faces off is a universal truth. 

Most importantly, family.  One piece of Chinese life that I love is that it is very common to see three generations of a family spending time together.  We saw grandparents, parents, and kids all around us this weekend and it is really special to know that Chinese kids are growing up with such a loving family around them.  It’s something we’ve lost in many parts of America and something I hope Chinese don’t lose for a long time.  It makes me miss my family but also appreciate the time that I do get to spend with them, even those it’s pretty rare these days.  The good news is that I’ll be seeing Em in May in Australia, and my mom and dad in July for a wedding. 

Until then, we have some more traveling and adventuring to do, starting in 48 hours!

Staying in touch from 12 hours away

Katy started working two weeks ago today and it’s been hard for me to be bored and in a city with so few native English speakers. Besides the difficulty of ordering food, it’s lonely not having people to talk to. I have attended several social events: the program InterNations is a global community of ex-pats in cities all across the world, many were native English speakers and it was nice networking and trading stories and hearing advice about navigating Shanghai; then our building held a meet-up for non-locals staying long-term; and finally are a few people I have reached out to or met up with - friends of friend mostly. But to be honest it’s been more than a little lonely not having a network or group of people that I consider my ‘tribe.’

Luckily I have many things to keep myself busy. There are a few websites I’m working on developing, my current job with www.newyorkcraftspirits.com is completely remote, so I can do the work from anywhere if I have halfway decent internet. I have also been writing, not just this blog, but for myself and for my upcoming internet projects. Of course there is plenty of reading that I’ve been meaning to catch up on and that I’m finally putting a dent in it. I enjoy these activities, plus I’ve been working out more regularly than since I was in college. Unfortunately, these activities are solo and the prevailing sentiment this week has been boredom mixed with loneliness. That will change, starting tomorrow when Katy and I start an epic month of travel. We will be in at least three countries, half a dozen flights, and many planned adventures planned - but you’ll have to keep reading to find out what they are.

While I am using this blog post to complain, I do know how fortunate I am. Without the internet, smart phones, and international calling plans, I would feel lonelier. Plus, we probably wouldn’t have been able to plan all the amazing travel we have coming up. But, even more importantly, I have stayed connected to the people closest to me, and reached out to some I haven’t spoken to in quite some time. We may currently be 12 time-zones different from the East Coast, literally half a world away, but at least it’s easy math. My cell phone plan costs less than ten cents a minute to the US so I’ve been taking advantage of that, and I hope I continue to do so when we get back to the West Coast.

Katy had to remind me that when we moved to Oregon in August I felt isolated being on the West Coast and three time zones behind everyone I knew on the East Coast. Additionally, I didn’t know anyone living in or around Portland. I knew I could have called friends and family, but for some reason I didn’t. I felt like I needed an excuse to call, and often failed at coming up with one. Now that we’re in Shanghai, I feel like being in China and craving the English language is my excuse to call. It’s been almost eight months since we moved to Oregon, but right now it is the home that I miss, even though eight months ago I missed the East Coast. Katy calls this “shifting baseline syndrome,” and she’s right. My baselines have shifted, but I will never stop yearning for the good old U S of A.

See you all soon - but not yet.

Working? We Talking About Working?

If you’ve been paying careful attention to my blog posts, you might have noticed that I haven’t said anything about actually WORKING in Shanghai yet…  That’s because the process to get approved to work in Shanghai is quite complex and took 3 weeks before I arrived and another 2.5 weeks once I arrived in Shanghai.  One part of the process was completed before I arrived, and then once I arrived there were three more approvals needed in-country.

The first step was BY FAR the most different than anything I’ve ever experienced.  It’s called the “medical check” and is a commonly discussed topic by the foreigners working in Shanghai.  I went for my medical check the first morning I was in Shanghai.  I took a taxi about 30 minutes away from my apartment and met an immigration specialist contracted by Nike who speaks Chinese to help shepherd me through the process.  We had to check in with various people at various counters, present 2 copies of my headshot, and then I finally entered the doctor’s office part of the experience.

The first step was to get my height and weight measured.  Then I was handed a hospital gown and told to take off everything from my waist up, including my bra and jewelry.  They gave me a key to lock everything up in a locker while I was waiting, but I kept my phone with me as a sort-of security blanket just in case.  I was then escorted, by doctors and nurses speaking varying levels of English, through a variety of rooms each with a different purpose. 

One of the first rooms I passed through required me to untie my gown and receive an ultrasound of my abdomen.  In another room I entered, they asked me to lie down and untie my gown and then placed these strange suction cups on different parts of my skin so that they could do an EKG.  The doctors and nurses who work there probably have a really tough job doing the same test all day, every day for people who don’t necessarily want to be there and typically don’t speak any Chinese.  However, they almost never said anything more than “lie down”, “untie gown”, or tell me which room to go to next for the next test.  It’s a little unnerving to be in a foreign hospital setting with people taking your blood, taking chest xrays, or doing EKGs without explaining to you what’s going on.

My EKG.  My mom (cardiac rehab nurse) said I look healthy!  It's a running joke among the foreigners I know here that we all have "fatty liver" according to the medical report, which is actually a precursor to liver disease if any of us actually had it.

 The whole experience is also strange because you are going through it with a bunch of other similarly confused/culture-shocked people.  There are couches in the hallway outside each room so you end up seeing the same people in the same lines over and over again.  However, the hallway is pretty crowded so it wasn’t always clear which couch aligned with which room.  English is a common language across the foreigners who were there, but it wasn’t always easy to tell people who were about to cut the line where they should stand to wait.

The whole medical check took about an hour and a half, and I left feeling very bewildered.  I had only been in the country 18 hours at this point, hadn't eaten since the night before, and was severely jetlagged, but I wanted to do the appointment right away so that I didn’t delay my visa process.  After the actual appointment, it took a week for the government to process my results and declare me “fit for duty.” It’s not clear what they were looking for, but according to the internet they may be screening for things like tuberculosis and HIV.

Following the medical check, I next had to present myself at the Public Security Bureau (PSB) to obtain a residence permit.  This involved sitting in front of a window while a government officer looked at my passport and typed things onto her computer.  I didn't actually say anything to her or answer any questions, but maybe the immigration specialist answered some questions on my behalf.  I left my passport with her and then a week later I received an email from the immigration specialist that my residence permit was approved and that the final application for the employment license was submitted.  This meant I could go to Nike and start my new job.

The entrance to one of the two buildings at Nike's Greater China Headquarters

My first day of work was last Friday, March 17^th.  It was nice to get into the office and meet the people I’ll be working with.  My first day ended up being epically long – I had a call with Nike World Headquarters (WHQ) starting at 7a local time and then didn’t get home until after 11p because of a team dinner and visits to three Nike stores with my team to make sure everything was prepared for an upcoming visit from some WHQ Vice Presidents.  One of the coolest parts of the store visits was seeing the “Back of House”, the place where all the inventory is stored.  In one of the stores, the employees have drawn a cool mural on the walls and I loved finding this secret part of Nike culture that most customers don’t get to see.

In another store, there was a quote from Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman translated to Chinese and written on the wall.  I don't know what it says but thought it was cool that a little bit of Nike culture and heritage made it to the back of a store!

It was a great first day, and I was glad it was Friday so that I could take the weekend to recover and get ready for my first full week of work!

Craving Chinese Food

It was Sunday night and I had spent the Saturday after St. Patrick's day hung over. I was probably a little low on sodium and was craving NYC-style Chinese food (not that stuff we got in Boston). Sure we are living in the largest city in China, but in our neighborhood it's actually easier to find internationally styled eateries. Since being here I have learned that Sichuan (also spelled Szechuan) cuisine is the most globally widespread cuisine referred to as Chinese food. There are Sichuan style restaurants here, but there are also the cuisines of Hong Kong, Hunan, Fujian, Cantonese, and others. On top of that there are noodle shops, dim sum spots, seafood restaurants and many other variations of Chinese food I don't yet recognize. It's intimidating picking what restaurant to patronize, plus i'm used to eating Western cuisines five to seven nights a week. Most New Yorkers have their go-to Chinese food restaurants that deliver but I've barely even eaten Chinese food so far, despite craving it.

The only authentic Chinese food I have had has been from Din Tai Fung, a chain of restaurants specializing in soup dumplings. Overall the food was excellent, but both locations I went to were on the third or fourth floor of a large shopping mall. Adjacent to clothing retailers, atop multiple escalators, and with bathrooms located outside the eatery, Din Tai Fung is not what I had imagined as authentic Chinese dining in China. My first experience at the chain was with another husband of a Nike employee. He's Asian-American so when the food came they presented me, and not him, with a laminated and illustrated placard explaining how to eat soup dumplings in three different languages. That didn't throw me off as much as the size of the soup dumplings, way smaller with less broth than the ones I learned to love in Chinatown. The food was good, but unfamiliar enough that I left hungry for Chinese food.

The second time I went to Din Tai Fung, Katy and I were at dinner with a new co-worker of hers who told us about her past year in Shanghai. We asked a lot of questions about Nike, food, transportation and her experience in the city. She's from New Jersey and it was nice to be chin-wagging in an intimate group of East Coasters. At one point the conversation was flowing and I even forgot we were eating, or in a Chinese food restaurant, or even in Shanghai - then someone realized we hadn't received half of the dishes we'd ordered. Chinese dinner service usually involves many dishes coming out as they are prepared and then shared by the table. Dumplings come out first but then everything else comes out fairly quickly, unlike a European course-based experience. The break between eating sessions suited me, but further left me yearning for a more authentic experience (or something familiar). Where in China does an ex-pat have to go to get some authentic New York City-styled Chinese-food? At least they have really good peanut butter here. . .

To be honest I haven't done much in the way of dining-out research, so I shouldn't expect to know anything or get the experience I desire. Most of our research into food and eating here has been focused on grocery stores and the relative safety of produce. We found some good resources for ex-pats on where to shop and what types of products to be wary of. We are blessed that the closest grocery store to us, City'Super, is new, trustworthy, and has plenty of imported brands we recognize. We shop there but prefer to get produce from Hunter-Gatherer, a small chain which works directly with farms to source their produce. Their produce is good, they have some comforts not found at City'Super, plus their prepared food is fresh, healthy and somewhat familiar. It's still an experience shopping there: the other day I accidentally bought Cava Cava oranges instead of Navels, yellow kiwis instead of green ones, and a Dragon Fruit which is going bad because I am intimidated to cut it up.

We have been cooking breakfast almost every  morning as well as some nights, but buying lunch everyday and going out for dinner more than either of us is used to. Last night we picked up bagel sandwiches from a local Shanghai chain started by a Californian called Spread the bagel, whose website boasts "Authentic New York in Shanghai."  They are pretty good bagels, but they messed up our order the first time, and Katy's bagel sandwich was made with the sliced halves upside down. Good food here, but it's definitely not familiar.

Even if the food was perfectly familiar, I don't think we could just avoid cooking for ourselves altogether. It is a big city with plenty of options but it's just not who we are. Tonight, we weren't in the mood to cook, hadn't planned anything, and didn't feel like running to the grocery store to figure it out. Instead we started using the food delivery service called Sherpa. It's a great site/app like Foodler or GrubHub which you use to order and track your food delivery. There are hundreds of restaurants to order from. We used Sherpa tonight to order Thai food because it's familiar but we didn't want to dine out at our local Thai restaurant (that we've already been to twice). For now, in China, Thai is my go-to because it's more the same because it is still international cuisine. I don't want to wish away the rest of our gastronomic experience here but I am definitely looking forward to getting back to New York in a couple of months and (over)-eating Chinese food in New York City with extra soy sauce.

A New Yorker's Day of Shanghaiese Tourism

I don't remember being up there, but apparently I was once in Windows on The World atop the World Trade Center. The next time I had a sky high view of the Big Apple some of my cousins were in town and they wanted to go to the top of the Empire State Building. Being a native New Yorker who grew up about a half mile from the building I figured the top of the Empire State Building was the ultimate tourist trap, but once I was up there I changed my mind. Up on the 102nd floor the city seemed so small, orderly, and peaceful. Sure I could still hear the sirens, but they were dimmed, distant, and decibels lower than what I was used to. 

When Katy said she wanted be a tourist and go to the top of a tall building in downtown Shanghai I did not object. The Shanghai Tower is the tallest building in Shanghai, but expensive for only 30 minutes of gawking, so instead we visited the bar across the street – on the 92nd floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center. Going up in the elevator I was still convinced that I was from a big city, but once we looked out the window my mind had changed. 24 million people live here in Shanghai and even though it was a relatively smog-less day, we couldn't see the outer edge of the city.

After enjoying a cocktail and a hot chocolate, we decided to go to the opposite type of tourist experience and visited Yu Garden, City God Temple and surrounding markets. The garden and most of the architecture is over 500 years old and included a huge pond of koi, beautiful stone architecture, interesting stone tiled floors, and even a few galleries of traditional art. Every once in a while we could see a skyscraper poking up above the garden wall, but for the most part we were lost in a garden older than America. The garden was quiet and the running water inspired tranquility. Even if they didn’t need the garden when they built it, it seemed like a good idea in the modern bustling city Shanghai is today.

  

The afternoon wasn’t over, but we were getting hungry and wanted to experience modern Shanghai from ground level, so we headed over to Tianzifang. The area specializes in hookah bars, street food, and tourist shopping (including plenty of fake Yankee hats and allegedly leather bags). The entire area is only a few blocks but it is easy to get lost in the maze of tiny alleyways and even smaller shops. Finally we found a New York style pizzeria and despite my skepticism, Katy felt like some comfort food. The dough spinner had good technique, the oven was hot, the slices dripped with orange grease and the beer was cold: so we were happy as clams. Plus the graffiti was sweet.

Overall it was a great day of getting to know the city but I think we also learned just how big and diverse Shanghai really is. We know now there is no way we can become experts in only six months. If we had six years to live here I don't think we would be confident telling people we are knowledgeable Shanghaiese. That being said, it's good to know that there are millions of experiences to be had here and we have only just begun - plus now we know where to get a decent slice if we're homesick.

Escapism at Shanghai Disney

Just when we thought we were getting used to being in China, it started to overwhelm us. We could tell because we started bickering; if you know us as a couple you know that we don't bicker. But, lucky for us, Disney went ahead and opened a theme park just outside of the city last year for us to escape to! And what an escape it was.

We started the day at nine o'clock sharp, right when the park opened. We weren't the first ones in line, but we may have been the most eager and definitely some of the few attendees who knew most of the (English) words to every song being piped in through the speakers. As soon as we got in we were pumped! We downloaded the app (or A-P-P as they said over the speakers) and we were checking wait-times update in real-time and trying to maximize our ability to get on every single ride as quickly and often as possible. We started in Tomorrowland, on Tron, then did the Buzz Lightyear space shooting extravaganza (I forgot the name) and waited for a parachute ride which was largely disappointing. After those three it was only ten o'clock and there was still so much to do!

We quickly moved about the park, going on other rides, stopping for an awesome pretzel and using the Fast-Pass system to minimize our time spent in lines and not on rides. By noon we had gone on almost every ride we had to including: the Seven Dwarfs Mine Cart, Peter Pan, the Soaring Experience and many others. It was nice how many other couples about our age were there, also without kids. It kind of validated how excited we were and reminded us that we weren't acting childish - or at least that it was normal how excited we were to be there. I knew it would be an awesome experience before we went, but I didn't expect to get so giddy and silly over re-living many of our childhood's best memories. 

One ride that definitely exceeded our expectations was the Pirates of the Caribbean cruise. Both of us had been on the ride as kids (separately of course) and that was before the movies had come out. Now that there is a movie franchise, characters and a lot more technology, the ride is even more entertaining than we remembered. Featuring multiple realistic Jack Sparrows, crazy IMAX-size video screens, and many other neat tricks. Next we wandered through the Alice in Wonderland maze, which was way more 2010 Johnnie Depp than 1951 animation. There were definitely mushrooms scattered about the garden and some pretty mad hats.

By around two in the afternoon, we had spent over five hours in the park and done pretty much everything we had hoped to before closing time. It was amazing to have been there on a chilly weekday in late winter because lines were short and we got to experience so much. We stepped just outside of the park to Mickey Avenue and had a very American lunch at Wolfgang Puck's. We talked about what else we might want to do in the next five or six hours before the park closed and our escapist adventure would have to come to an end. We had originally planned on staying the whole day but we were tiring and had already done so much. 

Thankfully lunch rejuvenated us and we were ready to ride the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, get dizzy in the Hunny pots, check out the Princess's castle (all princesses, not just Cinderella's), and take a boat trip through the Crystal Grotto.  Then, after some initial hesitation, we attended the Frozen Sing-Along, which of course was in Mandarin. We sat in the back and expected to duck out if it felt too weird, but the music was the same and we were enchanted watching young children possessed by the Princess Elsa. We sang along in English to each other and enjoyed the short show tremendously. At the very end of the show the actor playing Princess Anna said "Bye-Bye Shway-Bao!", which we have searched for but cannot figure out the meaning of. We are pretty sure it is a reference to the goofy snowman Olaf, but if anyone reading this knows what this means please write us. We've been saying "Bye-Bye Shway-Bao!" to each other ever since we left the park and expect it will be in our repertoire for years to come.

With only a few hours left and both the light and our energy quickly fading, we decided to head back to Tomorrowland, where we re-fought aliens on Buzz Lightyear and then rode Tron twice more. We decided to wait so we could sit in front and Disney even snapped the above picture of our last ride of the day. We were absolutely, gloriously, exhausted by seven o'clock but had spent a magical ten hours playing childishly, telling each other about our childhoods, and watching people of all ages behave like (mostly good) children; we were sure we were being people-watched back in kind. 

While we went to escape Shanghai, we didn't leave the city boundary but it didn't matter. Of the many observations on culture we had this day we decided that Disney is for every person, of all ages and races. You can't spell the words 'child' or 'children' without an 'i', and we were thankful that Walt Disney's creations had made it to this far-side of the world, so we could revel in the magic of it all.