April 22, 2018 - Out and about in Shanghai

A couple of different adventurous adventures recently!

The first started innocently enough.  The Ansteads discovered a park fairly near our apartment and wanted to show it to us.  The "green spaces" in this huge city are really amazing! Colorful in both sight and sound.  Quiet and yet busy. This one has walking paths, a patio with many couples dancing (in the middle of a weekday afternoon), a lake with boat rentals, a petting zoo, an amusement park, etc.

We like the sign.

With only two other boats on the lake, we decided on a nice, peaceful $7 boat ride.  These boats have electric motors and move about noiselessly and rather slowly. We had a lovely view of trees, flowers, people, and a few turtles basking in the sun. John drove with Kathy beside him and Clay and Tammie in the back seat. Then a fish jumps. Nice, right? Into the boat next to Clay! We were all digging for phones to record this, which resulted in us nearly driving into the rock wall. John should not look for his phone while driving a boat, even a slow one. Kathy had to turn the wheel away from a sure loss of our deposit. Clay tried to grab the fish to display his "catch," but the slippery guy "got away," sliming him and Kathy's arm in the process.  We have no evidence, but this is a true fish tale of the one that got away.

A peaceful park in the middle of a city of  25 million people.

"Feed the birds" - One took a morsel
right from his hand.

Our next outing was to Chongming Island.  This is a very large island (nearly 500 square miles) at the mouth of the Yangtze River.  It is technically part of Shanghai, but much of it is a very different from the major metropolis we're used to.  It's about an hour ride by bus to the bus terminal on the island.  We visited two parks, starting with the Dongtan Wetlands Park at the southern tip.

A map showing where Chongming Island is in relation to Shanghai.

Definitely a change from the hustle and bustle of downtown!

We toured the park on a "bicycle built for two" - our first
experience with this.  And we enhanced our teamwork skills!

We found goats. John has a student from
Chongming who says they are "delicious." The
goat thought John was delicious, too!

A highlight was the group of Chinese visitors who called the swans in for a visit:

Next, we got a taxi to Dongping National Forest Park, which is about two-thirds of the way to the north end of the island.  This meant an hour taxi ride.  Getting a taxi to pick us up at the wetlands was a story all by itself, but part of the adventure and resulted in reaffirming for us how very helpful strangers can be when we don't speak the language and find ourselves unable to call a taxi with our usual means! 

Besides a colorful entrance, the park's entry
walk is decorated with umbrellas hung upside down.

We thought the plant dragons were particularly interesting.

One walkway had several colorful trellis arches.

And there were barrels pouring out flowers. You can see some of
the forest in the background. There are miles of walkways through
the forest, most paved, and some camping (RV) and picnicking grounds. 

The grounds are cared for manually, at least along the walkways.

We followed the lead of an old Chinese couple who had fun mimicking the hearts.

 Then it was time to go back to Shanghai to teach our holiday makeup class on Saturday.  We had gone to the island on a Friday to beat the crowds of a holiday weekend, which takes place Sunday - Tuesday.  It worked - no crowds at all.  We came away glad we had decided to seek out this island that we heard a student praise last fall.  It was a great outing!