We caught the Maglev train from Shanghai airport into the city. Maglev trains are super fast and they don't even touch the tracks! They work by magnetism. Inside the train you can see how fast you are going. It was a bit scary at first but then it was exciting.

Shanghai is a REALLY big city. About 27 million people live here; more people than we have in the whole of Australia. Most people live in tall apartment buildings.



We went to see a giant model of the city. The buildings, roads and trees are tiny but the whole model covers an area bigger than two basketball courts!

 


Shanghai has a big river running through it.
This dragon boat was taking people up and down the river at night to see the city lights.

Some parts of Shanghai are very old, with lots of traditional Chinese architecture,

but most of the city looks new.

Some of the new buildings are really interesting to look at.

We saw a lot of motor bikes in Shanghai.
It would have been good to go for a ride on this one ... 

Shanghai is quite a crowded city but people make room for gardens wherever they can.

Red lanterns in the streets make everything look really cheerful at night.



  

The dumplings here are great!

We went into the Shanghai museum.

There was a sign about the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

We decided to go to the expo and see the Australia pavilion.

You can see us having fun there on our World Expo blog. The link is on our home page.

Inside the museum we saw really old and special things like this vase,

scary wooden masks that were used in theatres,

and traditional fishing boats from Taiwan.

We visited a modern primary school in Shanghai and it's really big because there are so many kids there. If you look closely you can see a class doing Phys Ed 

One of the classes played their traditional Chinese instruments for us.

They were great musicians.

Can you see where the kids keep their bags?

We had good fun with this class.

This class was having an English lesson. They have English lessons every day. It was mid autumn festival time in China and they were learning about the festival of Christmas in other countries. They made us very welcome and they gave us moon cakes to eat on Mid-Autumn Day.

We went to the Yuyuan garden, a very old and really beautiful Chinese garden.  It has lots of water that makes you feel peaceful,

windows like picture frames for seeing different parts of the garden,



with shady places to sit and watch the golden fish,

interesting and mysterious doorways,

and a dragon to watch over everything.



We sat on the step of the mysterious doorway to listen to our guide, Vincent. He said he would play some traditional music for us on his Chinese flute, just like people used to do in this garden a long time ago.

Vincent's Chinese flute sounded beautiful and everyone in the garden stopped to listen. We could imagine being here 100 years ago.

We ended our last day in Shanghai with a banquet. 

Sometimes in China you get the WHOLE chicken, including the head and feet, but we just ate the parts we normally eat.

It tastes really delicious. We loved all the food we ate.

After dinner we caught the night train to Nanjing.



We played hide and seek on the train with the little boy sitting in front of us.

He was with his mum and dad and they were happy that he had a game to play.

Most families in China only have one child. Most kids don't have brothers and sisters.

It's because there already so many people in China.

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