Around the World in 330 Days: Brian's Fulbright Journey in China and Elsewhere: Days 265-266: Low-Key Day, then Shanghai Wild Animal Park

Saturday we didn't do much. Grading, blog updating, worked on sabbatical portfolio. Kerry went to the dry cleaners. In the evening, we went to KFC at Chifeng Road station for dinner. We learned what a bucket of chicken consists of in China: 5 pieces of chicken (2 of them wings), 6 very small extra crispy wings (somewhat spicy), 1 half corn on the cob, 1 (very small) serving of mashed potatoes and gravy, and 3 Pepsis (each packaged individually, for some reason). All for 85 RMB (about $13.25). Not too bad a deal.

I would have to say that Sunday was one of the most fun days we've had in Shanghai since we got here. Today we went to the Shanghai Wild Animal Park. We had to get up at 6:30 am and take the subway a loooooong way in order to so: Line 3 to Line 8 to Line 2 to Line 16. But we did make it. We met up with two graduate students from my reading group, Yiming and Vera. We took a bus to get to the park (Bus 6), and then got in fairly easily: the wait was not long, very unlike Disney. Quite a lot going on in front of the park: juggling, African dancers, a dog catching frisbees, elephants, flamingos in a pen. I guess they were there to get everyone excited about what they were going to see.

I can't even name all the animals we saw in order, but I'll name as many as I can: tapirs, anteaters, cranes, penguins, raccoons, squirrel monkeys (which Kerry loved) just walking around. We also got in a sightseeing bus at one point and got to see many animals in their natural habitat, just walking around: lions, tigers, wolves, bears, deer. They kept walking in front of the busses! Two bears even climbed the sides of the "feeding" busses, though which people were allowed to feed the animals (we didn't do this because we wanted good pictures, and the "feeding" busses had too many wire holes). Once we got in another bus, we saw Chinese alligators, African and Asian elephants, hippos, and--of course--PANDAS. Five of my favorites were five that we got to have interactions with, feeding and petting them: doves and pigeons; kangaroos (we saw mamas with babies in the pouch); alpacas; swans; and lemurs. One lemur even jumped on Yiming's head! Soon after, we headed out.

There were interesting moments at the park. For lunch, we went to "Happy Hamburger," which, incidentally, HAD NO HAMBURGERS. It was all chicken and chicken sandwiches. When I asked Yiming about this, she seemed to take this in stride: "Oh, yeah, it's chicken." She said. Huh! When I think hamburger, I think...oh, I don't know...ground beef???? After lunch, I witnessed a woman pulling her little boy's pants and underwear off right in public and then she opened a plastic bag and let him pee right into it. In front of everyone--and no one said a word. How very China. And old guy came up to me at one point, pointed to my belly, and gave me the thumbs up. Okay....

It was a lot of walking around, but we had a lot of fun. On the way back, we stopped at BK in Hongkou Plaza. This time we had real burgers. (Well, as real as BK can get, I suppose.) We also had black sesame flavored soft-serve ice cream. We didn't know it was black sesame until we tasted it. I liked it but Kerry wasn't so crazy about it.

I took 330 pictures today, but I narrowed them down to 14 of the best for this blog...