Shanghai- The Megalopolis

March 15, 2014June 3, 2016Leave a comment

Location: Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China

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Shanghai is a new city by Chinese standards, which means that it’s about a hundred years old. It only started its outlandish growth in the past 30 years, and is now the largest city in the world, second to Lagos, Nigeria. Al Gore’s fantastic nonfiction tome (but possibly secretly a dystopian fiction story) The Future depicts those two cities sprawling to the point that they outclass most small European countries in GDP, pollution, and population density. It’s been rigorously planned by the Party, to the point that they have a scale model of the entire metropolitan area despite a good portion of it not being built yet. You can see this at the Architecture Museum, a fantastic place to see the history of the city, but also the party rhetoric and its inevitable glorious, harmonious future. Never mind the smog.

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Xi’an- The Ancient Place

March 8, 2014June 3, 20163 Comments

Location: Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China
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The only location we visited that could tell you more about the history of China in one glance than Beijing is Xi’an. We only spent 3 days here, and they flew by. Though it is large, the city of 9 million seems almost quaint in comparison to the other megalopolises, and the people were kind as well as knowledgable about the immense amount of artifacts contained within the city’s walls.

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Harbin-City of Ice

February 21, 2014June 3, 20164 Comments

Location: Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China

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Despite being the first city in our series of travels, we knew the least about Harbin. I added it to our itinerary after reading an article claiming the city as a can’t-miss spot for winter tourism in China and the host of the greatest winter festival in the entire world. Those are such bold words, it was just too tempting not to see it with my own eyes. After looking at photographs online, and discovering that this life-size frozen playground was only available from January 5-February 5 annually, I became obsessed. This would be our only chance. You can judge by our pictures below, but it’s safe to say, the city did not disappoint.

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