Written and posted March 12th, 2018

Today was our first full day in Shanghai! We took what was supposed to be an hour bus ride, turned out to be three because of traffic, to the city of Suzhou. Suzhou, the Venice of China, is where T. Bei used to live and grew up so it was really special to see her home. We also were able to meet her parents for lunch and they traveled along with us the rest of the day. T. Bei’s parents bought us yummy Chinese snacks like rice cakes and a type of Jello.

We visited the Tiger Hill Pagoda, the Humble Administrator’s garden, went shopping on Old Pingjiang road, made a mad dash off the bus to try amazing soup dumplings, and took a night cruise on the Huangpu River. It was a very packed and exciting day. It was also a sad day. Our tour guide, Sunny, who has been with us this whole trip has fought for our needs (like extra Sprite) and has been an amazing person throughout this trip, is not able to come with us to Hong Kong since they use their own tour guides. Hong Kong will be different without her and I wish we could even bring her back to the States, but I definitely will be using WeChat to talk to her regularly.

Tomorrow we fly to Hong Kong extremely early, so I am going to get some rest. See you in Hong Kong!

– Anna